• Mediaweek, Wednesday, March 18, 2009 11:45 AM

In a research report, Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield makes a couple of startling conclusions about Google's attitude toward social networking: one, the search giant doesn't care about social networking; two, social networking is gradually making search less relevant.

According to Greenfield, Google's algorithm isn't well-suited to social networking sites, which is why its search deal with MySpace isn't performing as well as expected. "Nine months have gone by since our note, with MySpace now having just over a year left on its search deal with Google...and Google has done nothing to improve its social search algorithms," Greenfield says in the report. "Increasingly it appears as though Google simply does not care about social search."

Meanwhile, he adds that the basic functionality of sites like Facebook and Twitter is "diminishing the value of search," as users increasingly look for information by asking friends instead of Google.

Read the whole story at Mediaweek »