Google and Microsoft both have reached deals with Twitter to include the microblogging platform’s user updates in their searches.
"We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data," Google’s
The product that "showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months."
Google’s high-profile called the Twitter content "an entirely new type of data."
Earlier in the day, Microsoft said it would integrate both Twitter and Facebook’s public messages into Bing search results, breaking the news at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.
The tweets flow into the Bing search engine results live, in real time, Microsoft senior vice president Yusuf Mehdi told the 2.0 summit. The stream will be filtered for duplication, spam and adult content.
"We now have access to the entire public Twitter feed and have a beta of Bing Twitter search for you to play with," Paul Yiu of the Bing Search Team posted on the new Microsoft search engine’s blog.
Skeptics said Google seemed to rush out its announcement in response to Microsoft’s presentation and Twitter beta.
"Google’s actually nervous enough that people might think that Microsoft had a good search idea that they felt necessary to respond with vaporware," wrote Silicon Valley Insider’s Henry Blodget. He accused Google of playing "catch-up in its core business."
Twitter is in the process of raising about $100 million of new funding that would value the company at around $1 billion. Before the deals were announced Wednesday, the social-media company had no apparent revenue stream.
Twitter, meanwhile, has just logged tweet No. 5 billion.
