Google To Integrate Twitter Search Too

Just a few hours after Twitter announced it would be integrated into Microsoft Bing search, Google also announced it will include Twitter status updates into it's search engine.

At Google, our goal is to create the most comprehensive, relevant and fast search in the world. In the past few years, an entirely new type of data has emerged — real-time updates like those on Twitter have appeared not only as a way for people to communicate their thoughts and feelings, but also as an interesting source of data about what is happening right now in regard to a particular topic.

Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you'll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.

said Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience in a blog post.

So Bing won the real-time battle with Google for just a few hours, although Bing's Twitter search is already live, while Google will integrate Twitter's data in its search results in the next few months.

Absent from Google's announcement, however, is Facebook (Microsoft announced deals with both Twitter and Facebook at yesterday's Web 2.0 Summit). That said, the vast majority of status updates on Facebook are not public, so how much of an advantage that will be to Bing is dependent largely on how Facebook is able to change user behavior.