Google have been taking a fair amount of heat in the last couple of days since they launched their social search product with the blogosphere up in arms about their handling of the launch. Rather than using the publicly available data from Twitter and Facebook, they have instead decided to go with their own Google + data which is of course far more limited considering barely anybody uses the service.

In an unusual move Twitter (who Google used to have a deal with) weighed in with a statement and now the way Google have launched the product has attracted attention from the FTC over anti-trust issues. It’s a complicated topic that can be seen from a number of different angles so here are a selection of the best posts looking at the issue from the various angles.

The Must Read Content

If you haven’t been following this messy story, then this is a good recap over on Marketing Land about all the main points and some of the technical questions answered behind what this all means.

Matt Cutts is basically Mr Google search and his post tries to paint a little bit of the logic that went into coming up with this product.

Google replied with a comment on Google + itself that attracted over 150 comments and some interesting insight. As you can imagine, the comments on Google + itself are all pretty positive in their favor.

Google Chairman and Ex CEO Eric Schmidt gives his take on it all and seems more than a little peeved by the questions

Techcrunch come at it from a different angle by saying that Google could have known exactly what it was doing all along and is trying to drag Facebook in to a storm ahead of their IPO.

One of the most important search engine blogs in the world Search Engine Land shows Real-Life Examples Of How Google’s “Search Plus” Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy

Out of all the blog posts on this, it is MG Seigler who really seemed the angriest and this post was the one that really kicked things to the next level.

With these big companies battering each other and fighting, Gigaom thinks that in the end it is going to be the users who end up losing out.

The first couple of lines of this post sum it up perfectly… “In today’s business climate, it’s not normal for corporations to cooperate with each other when it comes to sharing core assets. In fact, it’s rather unusual.” The full post is well worth a read.