Google’s Vice-President of Search Marissa Mayer has just made a surprise announcement at the Web 2.0 Expo: a new Google Labs feature called Social Search. They just gave a quick demo of the new feature.

While the details are still sparse, here is what we currently know (and we’re still updating, so check back for more information):

- The bottom of search results will soon have social networking information from your friends, like their Flickr photos or their status updates. It’s a blended search integration, similar to seeing news or image results.

- These are pulled from social networks connected to your Google Profile. The more that are connected, the more social information that will appear in search results.

- They have also improved searching for images using social networks. Images become more relevant using social networking data.

- It will launch in Google Labs in the next few weeks.

via mashable.com

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In November, we officially closed our acquisition of YouTube, and since then we’ve received a number of questions about what will happen next. The summary is that Google Video and YouTube will continue to play to their respective strengths. But here’s a bit more detail:

Google’s strength — and its history — is grounded in search and in innovating technologies to make more information more available and accessible. YouTube, meanwhile, excels at being a leading content destination with a dynamic community of users who create, watch and share videos worldwide.

Google search results already include links to content that’s hosted on YouTube. Starting today, YouTube video results will appear in the Google Video search index: when you click on YouTube thumbnails, you will be taken to YouTube.com to experience the videos. Over time, Google Video will become even more comprehensive as it evolves into a service where you can search for the world’s online video content, irrespective of where it may be hosted.

This is part of Google’s overall goal to give you the highest quality search results possible. For example, some users who do a Google search for Martin Luther King, Jr. may want to find websites about him. Others may want to see images of him. And others may want to watch video footage…

YouTube, as we’ve stated previously, will remain an independent subsidiary of Google, and will continue to operate separately. Google will support YouTube by providing access to search and monetization platforms and, when/where YouTube launches internationally, to international resources. YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen and the rest of the YouTube team will continue to innovate exciting new ways for people to “broadcast themselves.”

Earlier this week, we announced one example of innovation in monetization and distribution with a new AdSense video test. We’ll be working with a wide set of content providers, grouping together high quality video content from providers with high quality ads and offering them as playlists which publishers can select from and display on their AdSense sites. (There’s more about the test on the AdSense blog.)

Today represents just the first step in our plan to bring you a comprehensive video search and content platform. We’ll provide ongoing updates as they unfold.

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Watch Video:

Learn more:

http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=142143

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