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We've covered Google's apparent attempts at becoming social at length here on the Hoop blog; but have always been a little suspicious of their true motives. When we discussed Social Search back in October, we concluded the post with the following:

It's the '+1' button that is going to make or break their attempt to become social. Google+ is just a novel way to encourage people to sign up for a Google profile – which then gives Google access to users' social data but more importantly the '+1' in search. A 'truly social' search experience.

On Tuesday, Google Fellow Amrit Singhal (the engineer partly responsible for the algorithms that Google's search engine is based on) published a blog post entitled "Search, plus Your World" – which is summarised below.

• Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
• Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you're close to or might be interested in following; and,
• People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.

Over the next week, Google are rolling out the above three features (which we'll call Search+ for now); all of which result in personalised search results to live search queries. These features will be available to the 40m users with Google+ accounts; producing individual results for each user's query, populated with content from (only) Google+.

On the one hand, the (opt-out) Search+ intiative is wonderful – and will provide Google+ users with truly personalised (and relevant) content from their social circles. It's also worth noting just how much Google appear to be supporting social data. Just think how (much more) useful Google would become if it were to feature content pulled from every one of your social networks! But then on the other hand, Search+ raises some interesting questions.

• As Search+ won't include results from Facebook (which blocks Google from crawling it) and priorities Google+ content over the publicly available results from Twitter, is Search+ anti-competitive?
• Will Search+ cause Facebook and Twitter to open up and allow Google to crawl their non-public content – or simply deepen the animosity between the three companies?
• Will the personalisation of results from the world's most popular search engine (by market share) have consequences on how we discover information?

Facebook has always been a closed platform, denying Google the right to crawl its databases – although some public posts are available to the search engine. But then Facebook and Google have never really been best buddies.

Twitter did have the 'Realtime Search' agreement with Google, where the search engine's crawlers could access tweets and profiles. But then, for some reason, the two companies couldn't see eye to eye when the agreement came for renewal. So it wasn't.

It has been suggested, although this is a long shot, that Search+ is an extremely risky move to get Facebook (and to an extent Twitter) – its serious competitors in social – to open up (to search) or face the same antritrust procedures that are currently being leveled at Google. Given the history, it's extremely unlikely this is going to happen.

So what's wrong with Search+? Yes, it's a little anti-competitive and will probably lead to a slap on the wrist from an antitrust inquiry – but it'll do little to clear the air between Google, Facebook and Twitter. Search+ won't cause Google+'s competitors to open up their databases either. It's Google's focus on personalisation and their departure from delivering relevant and unbiased results to queries that is causing the issue – an issue explained by Eli Pariser in his TED talk below.

Google's job, as one of the best and most popular search engines in the world, is to deliver unbiased, un-prioritised results to its users. Even if those results do include Google's competitors.

By forcing Google+ into the results page and skewing the relevancy of results, Google is ultimately moving away from what made Google successful in the first place.

1. Mobile search advertising gets a facelift

Mobile is the future. We weren't surprised when we heard that mobile advertisers will have spent over $1bn by the end of this year, a trait that's set to rise to $4.4bn by 2015. Google rolled out their latest range of mobile search adverts this week – head over to the Google blog to find out more.

2. "Here's to the crazy ones..."

With news that Steve Jobs may have designed the iPhone 5 "from concept to final design", we might not have seen his final contribution to society through technology. Which is a nice thought.

Until we do see the launch of the latest iteration of the world's most popular smartphone, here's the only Apple advert he ever narrated – which was never broadcast. You can watch it on YouTube.

3. Dropbox and Forbes

The two founders of Dropbox, one of the most useful tools we use here at Hoop, were recently interviewed for a fantastic piece in Forbes magazine. You can read the article in its entirety on the Forbes website.

4. Flatulent fish

A truly bizarre headline – but a true one according to the National Geographic. Well worth a read, even if for the odd factor!

5. Serenity

We're big fans of bicycles here at Hoop – as their frequent inclusion on the Hoop blog may suggest. We also love a nice bit of animation, so we thought this lovely Belleville Rendezvous-esque advert for Hutchinson's new tyre (although we're not sure the 'Serenity' will protect you from charging antelopes), courtesy of French creatives Fortiche, was a perfect combination. You can watch the 'Serenity' video on Vimeo here.

Google doesn't like Facebook and the feeling's mutual. Both Silicon Valley heavyweights are competing for supremacy and, to start with, it looked like Facebook had won the first round. But we're not writing Google off just yet...

Facebook are without a doubt one of the biggest companies in the technology space. They've got the biggest social network in the world with 800m active users – and they predict they'll be the world's first 1bn-strong network by the end of 2011. Facebook were (and, to an extent, still are) pretty much unrivalled in the social space until Google launched their latest attempt at a social network in July.

Prior to launching their social network, Google rolled out the '+1' this April – which was seen by many as an attempt to compete with Facebook's 'Like' button (which, after being released in April 2010, is currently used on around 2bn posts a day).

Google described the '+1' as:

"...digital shorthand for "this is pretty cool." To recommend something, all you have to do is click +1 on a webpage or ad you find useful. These +1's will then start appearing in Google's search results."

Earlier this week, Google announced that their '+1' button is being "served 2bn times a day", which may not match Facebook's 'Like' button statistics (the 'Like' button is actually being used 2.3bn times a day) – but it's close. This isn't just Google encroaching on Facebook's social space; the '+1' button hints at something bigger.

Google+ has only been open to the public for just over a month, but it's already doubled its user base from 25m to 50m and is growing at 4% a day (with a predicted 2m new users signing up every day). Admittedly, Google+ is quite a way off Facebook's numbers, but Google might not be after Facebook's crown after all. When we first covered the social network on the Hoop blog we said:

"If Google can fit the rest of their portfolio (search, advertising, mobile, video, blogging to name but a few of their other services) into this social venture, they'll have something that none of the other networks have. A truly social all-web encompassing experience."

Google aren't pinning all of their hopes and dreams on Google+ (although it's fair to say it's important to them). The social network will do them well, but it won't ever become their primary source of income. Advertising is, and, for the foreseeable future, will continue to be.

It's the '+1' button that is going to make or break their attempt to become social. Google+ is just a novel way to encourage people to sign up for a Google profile – which then gives Google access to users' social data but more importantly the '+1' in search. A 'truly social' search experience.

Google thinks this is the future; personalised results to each and every search query – with results (paid and organic) ranked using recommendations from people in your social circles.

Because, after all, you're just asking Google a question. And they want to give you the right answer.

So is the +1 button the key to unlocking Google's future; or is social search a flash in the pan? Feel free to leave us a comment below or let us know in via email or Twitter.

The long tail of keyword research (and why single keywords are for losers)

Wordtracker is a London based business that compile a database of 330 million search terms and provide online tools that help business owners and marketers identify keywords and phrases that they can use in optimising their website content for search success.