I missed something in the last month and I’m embarrassed by it. It’s something I should have been on top of and, quite frankly, I don’t know how I missed it.

It appears that Google no longer has realtime search. They let it go. The reason why is a little fuzzy to me, but it has something to do with Twitter. In essence, the contract between Google and Twitter that allows Google to run Twitter’s realtime streams through its search engine has run out. And that makes me wonder if Google thinks realtime search is even necessary.

I for one thought it was a great product. I did think there was an over-reliance on Twitter. But with Google+ on the scene, perhaps Google can resurrect realtime search without Twitter.

OK, maybe not.

Google+ isn’t as popular in its current stage as Twitter is. It’s got a long way to go, in fact. Until it catches up with Twitter – which could be a couple of years, at least – Google either needs to re-establish its relationship with Twitter or build a realtime search engine that doesn’t rely on it.

I’m not knocking Twitter. I love the service. It’s just that realtime search shouldn’t rise or fall on one service.

Tags: google, realtime search, Twitter

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 7th, 2011 at 6:54 am and is filed under search engines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.