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Hotpot: Google’s New – And Troubled – Recommendation Service

Google has recently launched a new service which allows users to get personalized search results when they do a search for local places. It works by providing the user with search results based on recommendations from friends for example, you might search for a sushi restaurant and see that a certain option has been rated ‘5 stars’ by one of your friends.

Google Places – There are 50 million places around the world for which Google holds details of.

The places you like – When you rate a place, Google will list other places you may love to visit.

The places your friends like – You will be able to share your ratings with your fiends and see the places they’ve recommended.

However, Hotpot has a serious flaw in that it is not linked to any of many online social network services most users are already signed up to; it isn’t even linked to any of Googl’s other friends-based services. This means that, instead of being able to quickly and easily choose Hotpot collaborators from pre-existing friends’ lists, people wishing to use this service need to create a whole new list, which may prove too much trouble for many potential users.

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