Google and Twitter clash over social search

The relationship between former search partners Twitter and Google has become more frosty this week, with the two web giants locked in a war of words over the increasingly important role of social search.


The row follows Google’s recent “Your World” update means users will see more links to Google+ when they search the web, including in part of the results page usually set aside for advertising.
The new service will see Google pluck results most relevant to each user, not just from billions of Web pages but from the personal information shared with contacts on its Google+ social network.
New services will incorporate results from a user’s friends and profile in the social network Google+, as well as people, pages and profiles in a user’s network or adjacent to it.
The service will only work if a user is signed in to their Google account, and a new button on the search results page will allow people to toggle between results from the web and from what Google is calling “Your World”.
The move angered Twitter. Its most senior lawyer, Alex Macgillivray, branded Tuesday a “bad day for the internet” via Twitter, and accused Google of “warping” search.
Twitter followed his comments with an official statement complaining that “Your World” would make it harder for web users to find relevant tweets.
“For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet,” it said.
“Often, they want to know more about world events and breaking news. Twitter has emerged as a vital source of this real-time information, with more than 100 million users sending 250 million Tweets every day on virtually every topic. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter; as a result, Twitter accounts and Tweets are often the most relevant results.
“We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.”
Google responded via Google+, entering into an extraordinary public argument with Twitter. It said it was “a bit surprised by Twitter’s comments about search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer Since then we have observed their rel=nofollow instructions.”
Rel=nofollow is a code that prevents search engines from following links, explained Mashable.
The post alludes to the agreement between Google and Twitter which gave the search engine access to public tweets. The agreement was allowed to lapse in July last year. Now Google is implying it was Twitter who decided not to continue with the agreement.
The retaliation referred to Twitter’s refusal to allow Google to fully index tweets because it would agree to its terms.
Twitter does have a deal with Microsoft to allow Bing, Google’s biggest search engine rival, to index tweets.