Google announced that it's personalizing its search results for all internet users. Most reactions I've seen, Tech Inciter for example, focus on internet privacy issues.
As a media watchdog, my initial reaction was uncertainty for the search engine optimization of HonestReporting and other web activism sites.
But another response – a comment posted by Tedster, at Webmaster World (via The Register) — resonates with another important point in HR's in-house chatter:
There's something about always getting personalized search results that is socially troubling, too. I can see it creating a kind of ostrich phenomenon, where the average user is less and less exposed to anything new. I noticed this happening in my own online news consumption several years ago, and took intentional steps to make sure I got out of my own preferential areas.
Will we web activists find ourselves increasingly preaching to the online choir? Will we have a harder time breaking through to the rest of the world? Will Google's personalized search results essentially reinforce peoples' insular views?
