EPIC Complaint Against Google’s New Search Plus

Thursday afternoon, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that requested regulators investigate Google’s “Search plus Your World.” The EPIC complaint alleges that the new Search Plus feature shows favoritism towards Google’s own social network and violates Google+ users’ privacy.

Marc Rotenberg, Epic’s Executive Director, said the following in an open letter to the FTC:

“Google’s changes implicate concerns over whether the company prioritizes its own content when returning search results. Incorporating results from Google+ into ordinary search results allows Google to promote its own social network by leveraging its dominance in the search engine market.”

In addition to the concerns related to brand favoritism, EPIC is concerned that the Search Plus update may violate the privacy of Google+ users.. The letter stated that the new feature makes users’ personal data more accessible and complains that Google+ users cannot currently opt out of having personal information found through Google search.

Google responded to the recent backlash regarding the update with the following statement:

“Our goal with search has always been to provide the most relevant results possible. That’s why for years we’ve been working on social search features to help you find the most relevant information from your social connections no matter what site it’s on. Search plus Your World doesn’t change who has access to content, it simply helps people rediscover information they already have access to. We’ve taken special care with our new features to provide robust security protections, transparency and control for our users.”

The new Search Plus feature automatically personalizes search results to include photos you or your connections have uploaded, relevant Google+ posts and comments, quickly find profiles, or discover related people and pages.

What Is Google Plus?

What is Google+?
It is Google’s latest attempt in gaining some market share in the social network area. Here is how Google explains the new service:

There are 5 main features to Google+: Circles, Hangouts, Instant Upload, Sparks and Huddle.

Circles
While most social networks are about sharing with a wide audience, Google has gone in the other direction. Circles allows you to group friends, family, and various associates into groups and optimizing the flow of information to each one. This is a great way to keep your professional and private life separate and something which Facebook doesn’t easily provide.

Hangouts
In my opinion, this is the coolest feature of the project and it’s what sets Google+ apart from Facebook. Hangouts lets up to 10 users simultaneously video chat with each other face-to-face.

Instant Upload
This is a simple way to ensure that all the photos you take on your phone are easily accessible. While you’re snapping pictures, Google+ adds your photos to a private album in the cloud. This way they’re always available across your devices—ready to share as you see fit.

Sparks
Think of it as anything that is meant to “spark” a conversation. Google+ will keep a feed of content that is based on your interests which you can view at any time and then share with your friends who have the same interests.

Huddle
Huddle is a group text-chat tool within Google+ for having private conversations within a Circle. You can use this feature directly from your phone – that’s if you use an Android 2.0+ or iPhone 4.0+ phone.

There are some great videos explaining each feature in more depth here.

Other things you should know about Google+:

• An Android app is currently available for Google+
• Google has submitted to Apple’s App Store an iOS app for using Google+ and it is awaiting approval
• Businesses looking to market on Google+ won’t be left out. “Pages” similar to Facebook “fan pages” will be coming soon, according to Google’s Jeff Huber
• Google has already been forced to tweak its privacy setting on Google+ by completely eliminating the ability to share certain semiprivate posts to your wider network of friends
• You still own everything you put on Google+ (unlike Facebook which takes co-ownership”). The Google+ Terms of Service state “You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”
• Rumors of games in Google+ are already doing the rounds in the blogosphere
• Facebook has responded to the launch of Google+ with the announcement of “something awesome” tomorrow (Wednesday 6th July). We hear it is a deal with Skype to launch a video chat service
• Mashable have already provided instructions on how to import your Facebook contacts into Google+. Now that’s keen!

How can I get into Google+?
That’s the hard part. Unless you have already scored yourself an invite, then you’re going to be waiting a while. As of late last week, Google closed any new sign-ups for invitations as it was overwhelmed with the number of people who had joined already. So for the time being all you can do is sign-up to receive notifications of when new invites will be available. You can do so here.