Friday, January 13, 2012

Google vs Twitter : What really happened

Writing this after seeing lots of confusion over what all the debate is about and my good friend @chamindraH asking me to explain what's really going on. Making things super simple

What is Google?
Lame - but i personally know people who do not have an idea of whats going on. Google is the world's mostly used search engine (Where people go to find a web site based on a key word). Simply its like a library index catalogue if books in the library were web sites.

What is Twitter?
Is the 2nd largest social network after Facebook - But clearly different from Facebook since Twitter allows only text less than 140 characters per post. I have a full post introducing twitter. Click here

Recently Google announced they will integrate social (Google +) in to search results. And Twitter openly criticized Google for doing this. Here how it all started.


1. Google adds "Real Time" search -  2009 December
This was another Google results option like Images, Videos, News & Discussions. Real Time showed the Tweets talking about what you searched "real time" - then and there.


This was done after signing for a contract with twitter somewhere in 2009 October.

2. Twitter don't update the contract - July 2011 
I think for their ego - Twitter doesn't update the contract. I think the reason was that Twitter wanted users to come to Twitter and search instead of searching in Google.

3. Google takes down real time search results - July 2011 
Obvious - You can't keep something without a contract. So they take it down.

4. Google announces social results (Similar to real time) - Jan 2012
Social results are results shown from shares by your friends (in Google plus). For e.g. If you searched for "learning network analysis" you are shown results which your Google + friends have shared as given below.



5. Twitter slams google - Jan 2012
This week Twitter slammed Google saying they are going to spam search results with shared links.

My Opinion
What Twitter saying may be true. But they are just crying over spilled milk. If Google results are bad it will be an opportunity for Bing and Yahoo. What Twitter should try to do is to reactivate the Real time with Bing or Yahoo.

Whats your opinion? Feel free to comment below...

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for this Bro. As you correctly said its a problem Twitter just created themselves. Could have renewed the contract and stayed on. Guess Twitter wants to do something on their own. Its a fascinating battle. Cannot wait to see what Twitter as well as Google will do next :) Cheers !!

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