With Google out, Twitter inks search deal with Yandex

Computerworld - Just months after Twitter and Google failed to reach an agreement for Realtime Search, the microblogging site has inked a deal with Russian search engine firm Yandex.

Yandex announced Monday that the deal enables it to access Twitter's full feed of public tweets real time and work them into its search results.

Twitter and Microsoft signed a similar deal in the summer of 2009 to add tweets to Bing search results.

A few months after Twitter hooked up with Bing, it inked a similar deal with Google.

The Twitter-Google deal lapsed last summer and the two companies have been unable since to negotiate a new one.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo told an audience at the Web 2.0 Summit last fall that he hoped the company could still work out a deal with Google. "We talk to these guys all the time, so we'll see what happens," he said in October.

Now Yandex, a small player in Google's enormous search world, got what Google couldn't.

"We are currently concentrating on social networking search," said Anton Pavlov, Yandex's blog search manager, in a statement.

"This partnership with Twitter reinforces our effort in this area. People share news, exchange opinions and discuss all sorts of matters in real time all the time. This kind of information will help us enhance our search results," Pavlov added.

Yandex, the largest search engine in Russia, also operates in the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey.

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed . Her e-mail address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.

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