Say you have a secret passion for woodworking: Relevant articles will show up in your feed. On the other hand, if you've been reading up on herpes that shouldn't show up in the feed, because Google is using technology to filter out "potentially upsetting or sensitive content."

When it comes to political interests — take health care overhaul efforts — what you get on Facebook or Twitter is heavily influenced by your social network, which could push you into groupthink. Thakur says the Google feed breaks you out of that, because it's based on the same search algorithm that crawls and ranks the entire Internet, not just what your friends share.