Google battles on with Bing, announcing its own Twitter deal

Computerworld - Not to be left out of the party, Google announced today it has signed its own real-time search deal with Twitter.

Marissa Mayer, vice president of Google's search products, announced at the Web 2.0 Summit late this afternoon that Google will be integrating tweets into its 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," Mayer, wrote in a blog post earlier today. "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."

"Where there are tweets about the topic and the news articles haven't been written yet, we'd really like to showcase the tweets," she said.

Mayer declined to discuss the financial terms of Google's agreement with Twitter.

Mayer also said at the conference that in a few weeks, Google will launch a service called Social Search in Google Labs. Social Search is designed to enable users to search for tweets and blogs written by their friends and the people whom their friends follow.

The news comes directly on the heels of rival Microsoft's announcement earlier today that it had reached its own real-time search deal with both Twitter and social networking company Facebook. Google has not made any announcement about setting a deal with Facebook.

In nonexclusive deals with both Twitter and Facebook, Microsoft said the company will integrate the social networks' real-time status update feeds into its Bing search service.

A few weeks ago, reports surfaced that both Google and Microsoft have been wooing Twitter to sign a deal with the microblogging site.

While Google and Microsoft may have found a way to boost their real-time search efforts in the midst of their raging search war, the deals announced today mean that the popular social networks, which still have no business plans, have found a way to bring in some hefty paychecks.

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