Infinite Path

The importance of real-time search has been evident for several months now; it’s not uncommon for news agencies to break news which originated on Twitter, the service which has come to define this kind of searching capability. Today, however, two giants in the world of online search moved to take advantage of the increasing focus upon Twitter search results.

Microsoft and Google have both signed deals with Twitter that will see messages sent via the service appear on official search results. Google is expected to spend some time perfecting the way in which it incorporates Twitter into its service and this may take some months. Microsoft, on the other hand, has set up a separate Twitter search page designed, no doubt, to cut into Google’s percentage of the search market and encourage users to search via their Bing site.

The time delay between the tweets appearing on Twitter and appearing in the search results is expected to be negligible and these public Twitter streams may just revolutionize the way in which we use the internet to search for the latest information on a certain topic.

There is no doubt that officials at both companies are extremely excited about the manner in which Twitter’s functionality could alter the course of their commercial futures. Marissa Meyer, the vice president of search products at Google, summed up the probable appeal of the deal when she underlined in a blog post precisely how “real-time observation” could aid search results, by offering “the latest and greatest information”.

The deal has, however, not managed to avoid causing controversy. The deal with Microsoft was tied up first, with Google making their announcement shortly after. Microsoft had probably planned to use news of the deal to represent a victory over their close web rivals and the top dogs at the company would undoubtedly have been kicking themselves upon hearing about Google’s subsequent move.