Will You Allow Search Engine to Tell You Who to Trust?

Google Social Search Launches, Gives Results From Your Trusted “Social Circle”

Upon reading this, I was so excited about this novel experiment combining our daily life (yes, most of people do more than 5 searches from Google so I boldly conclude search engine is part of our life) with our network, personally or professionaly. I even played with Google Lab to see how this social search works if utilizing on a biz purpose. Without too much luck finding people sharing similar “search terms,” I give this search milestone a second thought.

As technology gets more and more sophisticated, our personal interaction with the whole world gets funkier & funkier. People request to be your friends on facebook even though you have no idea where they pop up; followers based on common interest or even some “spammy” words drive marketers to Twitter-gold-rush; you search a term today and tomorrow you have 10+ service provider in your inbox selling you their stuff. It’s just too spontaneous, too fast, and too overwhelming, as if the basic trust is getting lost in algorithm. And now by introducing this social search, what Google trying to do, from my perspective, is to rebuild this tangible boundary between our need (search) and our privacy (those who we trust).

But I guess the question lies in: who? Can that piece of information be told by search engine? Can that be determined by whom we connect with over the Internet? While this might be a perfect news for those experienced marketers (with thousands of followers @ twitter, experienced in Google Reader, Google Profile…etc), I wonder as consumers being pushed to “trust” what search engine suggested (based on our networks & keywords), will we, sooner or later, find out it is another tool allowing either technology or sales approach us?

I really don’t have an answer, but I guess we will see the result in the next 6 months or so!