Twitter in Microsoft/Google Three-Way, as Search Giant Crashes Data-Mining Party
by John Paczkowski
Posted on October 21, 2009 at 2:35 PM PT
How nonexclusive is Microsoft’s deal with Twitter?
So nonexclusive that just hours after Microsoft (MSFT) announced it, rival Google (GOOG) lurched forward to say that it has entered into a similar partnership with the San Francisco-based microblogging service.
The search giant may be second to this party, but it’s not going to be late. But make no mistake–this is very clearly a rush job.
Some proof? Microsoft has code running. Google does not.
Twitter and Google announced the deal in posts to their respective company blogs.
“Our friends down in Mountain View want to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” Twitter co-founder Evan Williams wrote. “A fast growing amount of information is coursing through Twitter very quickly, and we want there to be many ways to access that information. As part of that effort, we’ve partnered with Google to index the entire world of public tweets as fast as possible and present them to their users in an organized and relevant fashion.”
Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search, was similarly enthusiastic about the deal.
“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,” Mayer wrote. “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.”
Once Google gets around to indexing Twitter’s real-time data.
