Google can enable access-controlled searches!

With the current infrastructure, google is in inevitable position to enable Access controlled searches.

What is meant by access-controlled search? Basically I would like some of my own content to be searchable by some of my friends. This is probably something that most social sites want to add; but can't add because most of such information is in emails (or in desktop).

Why is google (through gmail) in a good position to implement this? Here is the recipe:

• Allow labels to group the contacts. (This in itself is a major value addition - see more notes below.)
• Emails get the labels from contacts (in addition to labels associated directly).
• Mark labels with "Allow this content to be visible from the associated contacts"
• Modify gmail search box to search among contacts. (This search will give results from contact's mailboxes assuming they have labelled the content.)

In essence, to me it looks like best possible UI for access controlled search based on contacts: Associate labels to contacts and mark the label with read permissions. One could even mark it as "public" and let it be searchable by google - after masking off From/To/Cc and dates.

In any case, the real problem is: "How do we label the content efficiently?" Labeling contacts is easy and done only once (such as "Family", "My School Friends", "My new startup biz contacts", "VCs".) This in turn allows emails from those contacts to have same label and this is good thing.

This might as well be a killer feature for google.

-Vinod





permalink 6:34 PM