Google is launching its much awaited social search service called +1, the company has announced on its Google Labs site and corporate blog.
The service will let users vote on search results, then will use the votes to recommend and rank results for users' friends and contacts.
Users will need a Google Profile to use +1. Once they've created that profile, they can pick which friends and contacts to share information with by using the "Social Circle And Content" tab in the profile menu.
The service has been rumored for several months now, and is apparently only one of many efforts underway at the company to add a social layer to its services to help compete against Facebook. Some of those efforts were apparently slowed by political infighting toward the end of 2012, but product chief Vic Gundotra took charge of this particular initiative.
A report earlier this month guessed the name of the service as "Circles" -- which Google quickly denied. Apparently, that leak was based on the new Social Circle tab used to manage contacts.
Ironically, Google search exec Amit Singhal laughed off Facebook's chance of competing with Google in search back in January, saying "Social is just one signal. It's a tiny signal."
Google has also posted a video to YouTube explaining how the service works:
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