Perhaps a better comparison would be Buzz. That was a big change, rolled out to everyone at once, and an attempt at grabbing a chunk of the social web in one swoop.
Meanwhile, their repeated, incremental, segmented, non-intrusive changes to add social aspects to their searching have essentially all gone off without a hitch.
The first time I saw Buzz, I thought "Really? Good luck with that.". Prior to the privacy hubbub (I actually read the dialog), which nigh-totally tanked it. The first time I saw a tweet from a friend come up in a relevant search result, I thought "Really? Awesome." and I clicked on the link. I think this'll end up working better than their much-ignored stars on results.
Yeah, people are underestimating (and have been for a while) how useful social search is, and +1 is really just an extension of that. Although that may be because you need a Google Profile and have it linked to all your profiles to get the most use out of it.
Google had what people had been linking to on Twitter, but they didn't have what they had "liked" on Facebook. Now they have an answer to that too.
Meanwhile, their repeated, incremental, segmented, non-intrusive changes to add social aspects to their searching have essentially all gone off without a hitch.
The first time I saw Buzz, I thought "Really? Good luck with that.". Prior to the privacy hubbub (I actually read the dialog), which nigh-totally tanked it. The first time I saw a tweet from a friend come up in a relevant search result, I thought "Really? Awesome." and I clicked on the link. I think this'll end up working better than their much-ignored stars on results.