Google Search Homepage Gets G+ Share Feature

Combining sharing and searching is something Google+ is clearly aiming to perfect, with ‘Google Plus Your World’ returning social results when signed into Google+, and the recent feature of starting conversations from search results on Google+.

There was a largely negative response to their social search product when it launched back in January and a recent survey revealed that people don’t want personalised results on Google, suggesting that perhaps the world just isn’t ready for a marriage between social sharing and searching.

But Google have decided the time is now to search and share in the same place, and the changes to the Google bar announced on their blog a few weeks ago are rolling out. Their latest addition is a ‘Share’ feature in the top right hand corner of the Google Search homepage, when you’re signed in with an account that has Google+.

If you don’t have an account then the homepage should appear as normal to you, it’s only Google+ users who’ll see a difference, indicating that Google really do want your web and browsing activity to be an entirely integrated ‘Google’ one.

When you click on the share feature it allows you to add photos, videos, links or a location, and then selecting the people or circles you want to share with. I imagine the intention of the function is much like the ‘Pin It’ tab that lets you pin things to Pinterest via your browser toolbar – so as you’re browsing the web using Google and come across a site that you want to share, this feature makes it easy to do so, rather than going through your Google+ profile page. Google’s faith in its social networking site is undiminished, as they keep adding more and more features to it, but once again we have to ask – will more people actually use it?