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Here's the whole thing
Last year Google founder Larry Page became Google CEO. And he noticed that a large part of the value of the Internet is in its ability to leverage social connections.
Facebook had just announced that it had figured out that it could target advertising to you because you told it what you like. This had pretty massive implications for a search company trying to pitch you ads based on what you are looking for.
Page also saw a world where companies who fail to quickly change direction are put at great risk.
So in April 2011, Page told his employees that the size of their bonus would be tied to the success or failure of the company's "social strategy".
This is a rather ham-handed way to turn a company's attention, but remember that the Google hiring plan, for the last 10 years, was intended to create a "monoculture" of geeky problem-solvers...
...and you know just how social those folks are... maybe because you are one...
But the problem is that Google has now sullied its otherwise-pristine search results with self-promotion, which it has never done before.
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