Google announcements - personal search, visual search, realtime web, etc.

Joel Foner has gathered together links to recent Google announcements: Google visual search, personalized search for everyone, realtime web. He is holding a discussion about the potential impact of these new features on Second Life. Personalized search allows users to opt out. Search history is kept for 180 days though users can delete the history at any time. Joel points out to a write up by Danny Sullivan Google Now Personalizes Everyone's Search Results. Do we enjoy getting customized results or are we concerned that our search engines know our preferences? Or is it both? When it comes to real time search results, will we get the latest breaking news - or the latest breaking rumors? I know this is not an earth-shattering incident: I woke up this morning to the news that a woman was taken from Tiger Woods home to a hospital (December 8, 2009.8AM EST) I'm getting updates from a bonafide news source or two - and comments from Twitter. Twitter reports include woman already released from the hospital - and that the woman was Woods' mother-in-law. (8:06 AM EST). Most tweets are still only reporting that a woman was taken from Tiger Woods' home to the hospital. Hmmm... another way to teach students information literacy skills? Maybe the question is when does realtime information actually become substantiated.