December 22, 2008 by Alexei M
According to Marissa Meyer from Google, speaking at a conference in France, new Google initiative, SearchWiki is to find itself with an ‘off switch’ soon. Users will be able to decide whether they wish to use SearchWiki and its myriad functions for reorganising search results and annotating websites or just continue on as if the thing had never been invented.
So far, SearchWiki has divided opinion. This off-switch will be seen as a concession to the initiative’s detractors, many of whom have been calling for just such a function since they heard about SearchWiki. It also serves as a neat way of pulling the rug out from under the naysayers, allowing Google to simply say ‘if you hate it so much, just turn it off,’ to any future dissent.
Marissa also reiterated that data harvested from people’s use of SearchWiki may be used to help decide site rankings in the future, though at present it is not. She made the point that if a significant number of people are removing a result from a list of search results, then it may quite possibly make sense to remove it from everyone’s.
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