Tech & Biz

Microblog Search Universal: Google Plans Microblog Search Engine

by alia_d | June 15, 2009 at 02:42 pm

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Google is planning to launch a microblog search engine that would display results in real-time drawn from microblogging websites like Twitter. The microblog search engine, tentatively named Microblog Search Universal according to CNet, would fill a gap in the search capabilities currently provided to users by Google and other websites.

It appears that Google is gearing up to compete for domination of the social networking market place. Since Twitter's spike in popularity, commentators have begun speculating about whether Google will follow suit and create a program to compete with it.

One potential competitor for Twitter is Google Wave, an in-browser communication tool that combines email, web chat, IM-capabilities, and project management software. Dicussions on Google Wave will be conducted in real-time, so that you can see your friends type, character-by-character, and conversations can be replayed.

Aside from Twitter search, which only searches tweets on twitter.com, there are few microblogging search engines. Twitters search engine is ridden with problems, as the items are ordered chronologically and it can be difficult to find information within older tweets.

if one wants to search Twitter for tweets about a topic — say, about Ms. Spears, but encompassing anyone’s tweet that happens to mention her — Twitter’s data fill an ocean in which it’s hard to find specific fish.

Moreover, Google may soon be challenged by up-and-coming specialized search engines.

A number of search start-ups have appeared recently that differentiate their offerings from older search engines’ by playing up their specialized focus on the real-time Web. For example, OneRiot, based in Boulder, Colo., covers Twitter among other social media

However, a social networking alliance may be at work, as there have been rumours that Google in Twitter are dicussing a partnership. For now, we will have to wait and see, as Google has refused to comment on its specific ventures into the microblogging sphere ...

Google declined to address the notion of this particular service directly, but issued this statement. "At Google we strive to connect people to all the world's information, and this includes information that's frequently updated such as news sites, blogs and real-time sources. While we don't have anything to announce today, real-time information is important, and we're looking at different ways to use this information to make Google more useful to our users."

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Yuliya Talmazan

at 14:48 on June 15th, 2009

Personally, I don't understand the value of seeing your friends type in stuff in real time, character-by-character. What if they want to change their mind, and type up something else or correct spelling mistakes? Sounds counter-productive to me.

alia_d

at 14:57 on June 15th, 2009

Exactly what I was thinking. Part of the benefit of chatting online is you can think before you speak, haha. I think that is what people like about it and what enables some people to open up online in ways that might not in person. But it is an interesting idea to have chat in real-time...