> If we know something of your interests (based on G+ and/or search), isn't suggesting more relevant content to you on Youtube (as a purely hypothetical example) a good thing?
Yes (it's certainly convenient), but:
a) People will naturally question your motivations for these changes
and b) they will wonder at the privacy implications
The problem is (especially from the perspective of the tech press) you appear to be primarily motivated by "beating" Facebook, and people are now looking uncomfortably at their personal data juxtapositioned with public search results.
It may be that you held all this data already, and it may be that it's just as siloed off and protected at the back-end as it ever was, but the public is slow to wake up to the implications of the data you already hold. What might have flown below their radar yesterday, they're increasingly worried about today. Naturally the tech community who are better informed and think about these things much earlier are going to be amongst the first to start questioning you.
You're really shoving it in everyone's faces, so don't be surprised that there's some backlash.
Yes (it's certainly convenient), but:
a) People will naturally question your motivations for these changes
and b) they will wonder at the privacy implications
The problem is (especially from the perspective of the tech press) you appear to be primarily motivated by "beating" Facebook, and people are now looking uncomfortably at their personal data juxtapositioned with public search results.
It may be that you held all this data already, and it may be that it's just as siloed off and protected at the back-end as it ever was, but the public is slow to wake up to the implications of the data you already hold. What might have flown below their radar yesterday, they're increasingly worried about today. Naturally the tech community who are better informed and think about these things much earlier are going to be amongst the first to start questioning you.
You're really shoving it in everyone's faces, so don't be surprised that there's some backlash.