I have no idea why would anyone feel entitled to any sort of placement in Google search results, they do not charge anyone for being indexed, and if you don't care for the results that is what the address bar on web browsers is for.
This whole issue feels artificial and exaggerated: social profiles? seriously?! that is the least of any user's concerns. I think Twitter/Facebook and whomever should focus on their own products and not resort to these sorts of PR stunts.
Just to play devil's advocate here: for almost everyone in the non-techie general population that I've seen use the Internet, Google's search bar IS the address bar.
They want to get to Facebook? They type "facebook" into Google and click the first link. They believe that Google is how you access the Internet, clinging onto the old AOL frontpage mentality of portals and site discovery. That's why search ranking matters so much.
What's funny is that even people who never used AOL or Yahoo! (the early version :) still do the same thing, which I think says more about the cognitive load of browsers, domain names, bookmarks, etc, than it does about Google. Google makes all that load just disappear.
Then educate those people and don't push for some nanny-state mandate by which even if the freedom to switch services is available one service must freely advertise all the others.
Not to mention the hypocrisy of Facebook/Twitter blocking data from Google yet they are demanding to be featured anyway.
Yes, but why did anyone feel entitled that their browser should be bundled with Windows? Or that Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to include their own software within their own software? Seems to me that is a sense of entitlement from non Microsoft companies. Yet, it was monopolistic abuse and wiped out Netscape. That is why we have antitrust/anticompetition laws.
Facebook/Twitter aren't the real losers here though. They will survive. The problem is that Google is pushing their results to their average content on Google+ while tossing thousands of smaller content websites aside. Don't expect that to decrease. It is too easy for them to grow profits by pushing their own content. Whether they start other content companies or buy them, this is their growth.
Not that tired meme again. No, it's not the same as Windows+IE: in this case both products are free and both you do not own, it's just a website you visit basically. Also you are not trapped into them and Google didn't go about threatening OEMs.
You aren't familiar with antitrust laws. Because a company has a free product does not mean it can't be anticompetitive. Free means nothing.
Example: If one company owned 90% of the media content in the world and gave it a way for free because they made money on ads does not mean they can't abuse their power. If you started your own website how would people find out about you? 90% of the search engines wouldn't show you. You couldn't advertise on 90% of magazines, websites or tv shows. And 90% of social networks wouldn't allow links going out of their site. And so on.
This is an extreme example, but free means nothing.
Who was trapped into using Windows? Why couldn't you buy another OS?
Threatening OEMs? The MS abuse I was talking about was having to do with IE only. But Google is not innocent of strong-arming companies either. If Yelp didn't allow Google to use its reviews in Google Places, Yelp would be removed from the index entirely. http://searchengineland.com/yelp-google-told-us-its-our-way-...
This whole issue feels artificial and exaggerated: social profiles? seriously?! that is the least of any user's concerns. I think Twitter/Facebook and whomever should focus on their own products and not resort to these sorts of PR stunts.