Google Kills Its Other Plus

Andy Baio on a recent change to Google’s web search — the removal of the longstanding and beloved by search nerds + operator:

Google wouldn’t disclose exactly why they phased it out, though it seems obvious that they’re paving the way for Google+ profile searches. When Google+ launched, instead of adopting Twitter’s @reply syntax, they coined their own format for mentioning people — adding a plus to the beginning of a name — triggering the future conflict with the + operator.

So not only has the push for Google+ resulted in the removal of sharing features from a mid-level Google property like Google Reader, but it’s altering the feature set of Google’s bread-and-butter flagship product: web search.

★ Tuesday, 1 November 2011