Google's Vice-President of Search Marissa Mayer has just made a surprise announcement at the Web 2.0 Summit: a new Google Labs feature called Social Search. They just gave a quick demo of the new feature.
While the details are still sparse, here is what we currently know (and we're still updating, so check back for more information):
- The bottom of search results will soon have social networking information from your friends, like their Flickr photos or their status updates. It's a blended search integration, similar to seeing news or image results.
- These are pulled from social networks connected to your Google Profile. The more that are connected, the more social information that will appear in search results.
- They have also improved searching for images using social networks. Images become more relevant using social networking data.
- It will launch in Google Labs in the next few weeks.