19 Feb 10

Google acquires an Aardvark

By Peter Sanchez, Trainee Planner/Buyer

You could be forgiven for thinking Google can’t do anything right lately: stoking a diplomatic impasse between China and the U.S. over alleged hacking; delivering a still-born social media creation named Buzz, followed by a placenta of privacy concerns; waging war on book publishers the world over, by creating the world’s biggest digital book library.

But we can forgive, and somewhat forget. For this week, Google, rather quietly, acquired the start-up social search engine Aardvark. The Guardian reports that the San Francisco-based company - founded in 2007 by a group of former Google employees - offers what it calls the chance to "tap the knowledge of people in your network" by matching a user's questions with friends and contacts who might be able to provide an expert answer.

Users link their account to other social networking sites, such as Facebook. When they type a query into the Aardvark search engine, the system searches several degrees of friends, determining which individuals could provide the best answer and then contacts them to ask for their advice.

While the system so far has only a user base in the thousands - and is reliant on growth to make itself more powerful - it has drawn rave reviews from many quarters for providing a more elegant, personalised solution to searching for information.

It is ultimately a stealthy move into social media, via the backdoor of search. But the problem for me, and no doubt others, is that my friends’ advice is questionable at the best of times.