Google and Microsoft strike Twitter search deal

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 22 Oct 2009 at 09:14

Microsoft and Google have signed agreements to incorporate Twitter results into searches, as the battle for market share escalates.

Despite announcing the deals within hours of each hour, the two companies are planning to incorporate the service in slightly different ways.

Unveiling the integration in San Francisco, Microsoft's vice president of the online audience business group, Yusuf Mehdi, searched for various celebrity's names.

Alongisde Bing's own search results, a separate Twitter box delivered the most recent tweets about the celebrity and the most re-tweeted messages. The service also gives the full web address of any tiny URLS contained within the tweets, so that people can see where links are going to take them.

Also useful, is the ability to view entire Twitter feeds from within Bing. There's also a "tag cloud", displaying Twitter's current trending topics, giving an immediate glimpse of emerging news and stories.

Alongside the Twitter deal, Microsoft is also integrating Facebook status updates which have been flagged as public. This social-networking service has only recently introduced the feature, which is intended to directly compete with Twitter.

Google integration

Google announced its deal with Twitter only hours after Microsoft, and was much more low key - exchanging public demos for a few lines on its blog.

"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," says Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products.

"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."

Neither company would disclose the financial details of their deal, though Microsoft claimed no money exchanged hands to secure the integration of Facebook's data.

Microsoft also confirmed that the search results would be made available through Yahoo.

Twitter results should appear on the search engines over the coming weeks.