Google's Search Engine Getting Too Personal?

LIANE HANSEN, host:

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Liane Hansen.

Just as facial tissue has come to be known as Kleenex, and to Xerox means to copy, to Google has come to mean to search the Internet for information. Google is a search engine - and it's getting personal.

In December, Google expanded its personalized search service to provide results that are tailored to a user's Web-surfing habits. Unlike Google's recent launch of Google Buzz - which allows users to post links, videos and comments -personalized search didn't get a lot of reaction except from users who worried that their results would be too limited.

We want to know more, so we've called Danny Sullivan. He's editor-in-chief of "Search Engine Land" in Newport Beach, California.

Welcome to the program.

Mr. DANNY SULLIVAN (Editor-in-Chief, "Search Engine Land"): Thank you very much for having me.

HANSEN: Now, briefly explain how personalized search works.

Mr. SULLIVAN: Well, Google monitors a variety of things that you may do -primarily when you do a search, the results that you're clicking on and estimating whether or not you perhaps spent a lot time on that page. And they can kind of make some estimates on how much you seem to enjoy certain pages.

And they use that to then - when you do future queries on that same kind of topic - make sure you're seeing more of the pages from the Web sites that you seem to like.

HANSEN: So, in other words, it sounds like, you know, when this happens, that people are kind of getting their interests echoed back to them. What are some of the other concerns, other than this kind of echo chamber effect, that users have about this personalized search information?

Mr. SULLIVAN: Well, there's the privacy aspect. The really big change that Google did in December was that they made personalized search happen for everybody.

Now, they had had it in place for two - I think, three years before that. But for it to work, you had to be logged into Google. But now, even if you're not signed into Google, they're going to anonymously keep track of - or quietly keep track of behind the scenes - what you're searching on, and store all that information.

That was fairly dramatic, and it was something that you learned about through a blog post that happened around 3 p.m. Pacific Time...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SULLIVAN: ...at the end of December.

HANSEN: And is that why so few people paid attention to it?

Mr. SULLIVAN: Yeah, I think so. We have had any number of issues come up with personalization, or with privacy, that I'll get surprised that more people haven't cared about. And yet, things go on.

A good example was in 2006, when AOL had released some data for research purposes that allowed people like the New York Times to track down individual searches. And at the time, you would have thought people would have had this huge reaction, and we should have maybe new laws or new systems to protect our search data, or maybe we should prevent the search engines from keeping it.

And people went quietly on. They really didn't seem to care. And I kind of wonder at this point if we're just, you know, immune to whatever the privacy stuff is. It's not that privacy is dead, but maybe we just don't have any more nervous reaction to it at this point.

HANSEN: So what about for users, then, a Google user or actually, users of other search engines? Is there anything they can do to keep their searches as broad and universal as possible?

Mr. SULLIVAN: You would have to make sure that you're logged out. You would have to make sure that you turn off the history feature. And you would have to hide your, even your IP address. Because another thing that Google will do -your IP address, that's like your Internet phone number, if you will. And every time you connect to the Internet, Google or any other company can tell - kind of where you're calling from, in general.

So I don't know. My article in December was, you know, this was the search revolution and the new normal is, there is no normal results. And I think that's the case now.

And it's kind of sad because in one way, we've had a shared experience in search results in the way that sometimes we have a shared experience in going to the same movie, or to the same play, and did you see this on TV. And now, that's becoming less and less so. And I think that'll only become more dramatic over time.

HANSEN: Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of "Search Engine Land."

Thanks very much.

Mr. SULLIVAN: You're welcome. Thanks so much for the time. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.