Googling, the way you like it

21st November 2008

Google have launched a couple of features this week, with the aim of placing the Golden Amulet of Power into the hands of its Loyal Brethren. (Sorry, I've been back playing World of Warcraft again. Must stop. Must.) Basically, they're offering us customisation options. The first of those is a selection of skins, or themes, that'll make your GMail interface look vastly more unattractive than it used to. As I said in Wednesday's column, if you'll permit me the conceit of quoting myself: "The aesthetic quality of any website has an inverse correlation with the amount of freedom we're given to mess around with it."

Google have backed me up in a very timely fashion, which is good of them; I wouldn't say that the standard GMail interface is the most attractive thing in the world, but any feature which has the capacity to transform it into something like this is probably best avoided. So let's move onto the other thing, which they're calling SearchWiki. If you've ever used Stumbleupon and installed its toolbar, the concept will be vaguely familiar, because you'll have seen Google's search results annotated with a sprinkling of golden stars if that page has been given the Stumbleupon thumbs-up by a number of users.

Google's method is slightly different; it shows a tally count of the number of people who have recommended it as a good result – and if you do recommend it, the site whizzes to the top of your list of results for that particular search query, and stays there. Here's Google's video description:


(Note: It doesn't seem to have been rolled out to everyone as yet, as I had to sign into 3 Google accounts before I found it, so don't become irate and distressed if you can't find it.)

If you do have Stumbleupon and SearchWiki going in tandem, it does turn the renowned "clean and simple" Google search results into a complex array of buttons and indicators, but hey. More significant is the way this feature is giving Google even more information about the kind of stuff we're interested on the web, and thus another way of targetting ads at us. It's another cunningly executed trade-off: lose some of your privacy, gain the ability to have the 365 Cheeses website at the top of your results every time you search for "cheese".