
A Bomb in Oslo? What Google Lost by Ending Real-Time Search - nbj914
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/07/a-bomb-in-oslo-what-google-lost-by-ending-real-time-search/242357/
======
antics
Well, what _did_ Google lose? The title includes a subscript, "What Google
Lost by Ending Real-Time Search", and yet, the article has almost nothing to
actually say about the subject.

Nothing.

Instead of substantive contribution here, Mr. Jackson gives us simple-minded
insinuations: if only Google had _thought harder_ about how people use Twitter
to talk real-time about the disasters, they would have realized what they
would be missing out on.

Right, Mr. Jackson: as if there is a person in tech who missed the Egyptian
riots. As if we all don't know about the thousands of Syrians who named their
kid "Facebook".

The fact is, if Google did "end" their relationship with Twitter on purpose,
then the real question here is _why_ they would do that. Sticking your head
into a search bar, complaining that you can't find Twitter results, and then
pretending like no one else notices this is not an argument.

On the other hand, if you lather it up with a recent tragedy, it becomes
journalism, doesn't it?

~~~
Andrew_Quentin
Well maybe it did so because it wanted to take an undue advantage of its
market share. Now is that anti monopolisitc? Sure it is.

Off with their head I say. Google-s I mean.

~~~
panacea
I say... if HN wanted to discuss Google changing their front-page search
results to exclude realtime/twitter-like stuff this isn't the article to
promote discussion.

But I suspect it's only on the front page because it's a topical (and
terrible) news story that couldn't be on the homepage without some slight
tech-angle to make it HN valid.

Cynical.

------
tallanvor
I work very close to where the explosion was. --I've never felt a building
shake like that! Needless to say, we didn't know exactly what had happened at
the time, but we knew it was bad enough that we should take heed of the fire
alarm going off and leave the building.

A few pictures I took of the area, about 1-2 blocks away from the explosion:
<http://twitpic.com/photos/tallanvor>

~~~
mattdeboard
Good luck, stay safe and avoid public gatherings for the time being.

~~~
tallanvor
Honestly, my plan is not to let this change my life or routine. If I don't do
that, then I've let someone else take control of my life.

Of course, the gym I go to is going to be closed this weekend (they're even
closer to the blast site than my office), but they've already posted that
they'll be open again on Monday, so I have hope that Oslo - and Norway as a
whole - won't let this change their society.

~~~
mattdeboard
I meant directly in the aftermath. Secondary attacks on groups of onlookers to
the first attack are calamitous. Think a car bomb or rifle attack on first
responders/EMTs. And of course now we know he had designs on additional
attacks.

------
microcentury
Wowwww that is an insensitive headline.

Edit: This comment generated more debate than I expected, and I should have
made it a little more detailed in the first place. I didn't mean to start a
discussion on the type of information appropriate to HN.

It hardly needs to be stated that more than one reaction is possible
simultaneously, and we don't need to spend the rest of our lives lamenting the
event. However I think the headline would be better if it acknowledged that
people have been seriously injured, i.e. if it was something more like 'Oslo
tragedy highlights absence of RTS information on Google'. The way it stands
now it's like writing a headline on the evening of 9/11 talking about the heat
resistance of concrete.

~~~
wccrawford
When a tragedy happens, you don't have to restrict all your thought to the
injured people. You can use some of it for other things, like pointing out
that Google could have been a good source of information about this event if
they had kept their realtime search.

~~~
mirkules
I noticed that "Explosion in Oslo" article from the front page has been
removed. My guess is because it isn't considered "hacker news" - a discussion
we've had many times on this forum. So sadly, we have to resort to finding
technical reasons to report major current events so they wouldn't be removed.

~~~
wccrawford
Or you could report them on sites that are for that kind of information. I
applaud HN's determination to remain a site for hacker news, and not accept
anything and everything that may affect a hacker in some way, shape or form.

~~~
mirkules
Like I said, we've had this discussion _many_ times before on HN. The short of
it is, I don't want HN to devolve into a"current events" type of site either,
but without the now-deleted article "Blast in Oslo," I wouldn't even know
something happened (because I wouldn't have checked the news sites otherwise).

I accept HN just won't be my one-stop solution for major news (I may not like
it, but that's a different story). My comment was just a probable explanation
as to why the headline sounded insensitive.

~~~
mirkules
On a related note (pardon me from replying to myself), as we should "...not
accept anything and everything that may affect a hacker in some way, shape or
form," I am strongly opposed to stories like "OS X Lion Released Today" or
"Linux 3.0 released." In essence, these tidbits are just noise, worse than
"current event" type stories because they are related to hackers, but really
offer nothing interesting of value that we couldn't find on other sites
(slashdot, techcrunch, et al). It is actually a news event disguised as an
article.

More "Researchers develop tattoo that monitors glucose levels" and less "iOS 5
beta 4 is out," please!

------
CodeMage
Seriously, how hard is it to: 1) type "Oslo" in the search text box, 2) press
the "Google search" button, 3) click on the "News" link to the left? It's, to
use a tired old phrase, as easy as 1-2-3. I find it rather tasteless to grab
things like Oslo bombing and turn them into linkbait articles.

~~~
zem
it's not obvious that there is news worth clicking for. ideally, you want
google to say "this guy's interested in oslo? i bet he'd really like to know
that something of note just happened over there". people who were searching
for the news directly would have typed in "oslo bomb".

~~~
commandar
> people who were searching for the news directly would have typed in "oslo
> bomb".

Actually, the author of the article knew that _something_ had happened in
Oslo, but not _what_. That's exactly the kind of situation where news search
is useful. He wants information on current events; news search is where I
would expect to find that.

------
kristofferR
I'm really glad that it's a rainy holyday with not many people out in the
streets, if it was a sunny day with a lot of people out in the streets and
full offices it could have been a lot worse.

Some of my friends were in streets near the exposion while the windows
exploded and they were quite shaken up.

------
bh42222
As a social networking skeptic (no twitter, facebook, myspace, etc.) the only
time I am tempted to dive into the social network, is when I hear about this
kind of uncensored and real time information.

Lots of sources, perhaps none of them accurate, but tall of them together very
informative, all very close to the action, and in real time, that is something
impressive. But most importantly, it is something we will never get from
traditional media.

Why Google has let this kind of service slip is beyond me.

~~~
jarek
I've been following this on Twitter, and frankly the search is useful for one
thing only: identifying people who tweet from there. For any real information,
you have to go directly to their full streams. The search results are
cluttered to no end with retweets and it's hard to tell if the retweet you're
seeing on the front page of results is of a story from two hours. Just
identify the usernames of most commonly retweeted people and get the
information from them.

Incidentally Google News has been very useful in locating more official
accounts.

~~~
jarek
As an an example, right now (17:23 EST) the three top tweets for Utøya are
from five, three, and three hours ago. One of them contains the
unconfirmed/unofficial number of 20-30 dead on Utøya. The best official
information available now (retrieved from a specific user's feed) is 10 dead,
expected to rise.

------
drzaiusapelord
Seriously? Twitter? You'd get a lot of noise and less signal.

I don't understand why its so difficult for the author to visit google news or
press the news button to do a news search. Legitimate media beats twitter
speculation.

------
streptomycin
> Google let its relationship with Twitter end during the first week of July

Do we really know that? Couldn't it have been Twitter which didn't want to
continue the relationship?

~~~
wccrawford
[http://qualitypoint.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-happed-to-
goog...](http://qualitypoint.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-happed-to-google-real-
time-search.html)

As Twitter continues to work with other companies, I think we can be pretty
sure it was Google's choice.

~~~
cube13
OT: That blog brings me back to 90's web design in the worst way possible. It
took me a minute to separate the content from the ads, and I'm still not sure
if I actually read the post.

Since Google didn't turn around and immediately release a real-time Google+
search method, I think it's pretty safe to assume that this was entirely
business related. It doesn't make much sense for Google to unilaterally kill
the feature without having something to replace it.

It's also important to note that Twitter's contracts may not have expired with
the other companies, or they were able to reach an agreement that both sides
agreed to. Considering that Google was probably using a fairly considerable
amount of Twitter's server time(and possibly bandwidth) to make the real-time
search possible, I think that it's pretty safe to assume that Twitter wanted
more money than Google was willing to pay.

It's also possible that Google wanted more or a better level of access than
Twitter was willing to give. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll ever know the
exact reasons why this has happened, because of all the NDAs that have to be
around the actual contracts.

Either way, I'm still not sure that it's entirely Google's fault. At best,
like any business deal that goes sour, both sides are at fault.

------
SeoxyS
Can we _please_ not try to capitalize on the linkbait value of a major
terrorist incident?

Seriously, some stories do not have any technological aspect and I find
stories like this to be extremely disrespectful of the people who had their
lives turned upside down by this incident!

------
flexd
This is seriously scary, the buildings here shook and the blast was huge. I
work like 4-500 meters away from the area (as the crow flies), still a bit
shaken but luckily everyone at work are okay. Not so much those for those
closer as you can see there are no windows left on that building.

[https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-BUq73ENhYFk/Til_cwxIJeI/A...](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-BUq73ENhYFk/Til_cwxIJeI/AAAAAAAAAFU/3vDkYoqdOm8/s800/2011-07-22+15.46.17.jpg)

Live streaming from BBC/NRK <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14254705>

------
zipdog
This is a decent use-case for the elastic networks that Color touted ... if a
social network was pulling all the public activity from those in the vicinity
into an automatic, temporary group that people could follow, the result would
filter out people just using the hashtag to comment and leave a feed of raw
on-the-spot info

------
kristofferR
Here's some footage from the attack location just seconds after the explosion:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciQvqBgK-nY>

------
ChuckMcM
Interesting, if you did the search on blekko.com (and disclosure here, I work
for Blekko) we pick up the Reuters story (we've got a onebox if your search is
showing up in the news).

I think what The Atlantic is complaining about here is more that without the
Twitter stream, Google has lost access to a signal that they may want to start
crawling around looking for stuff.

Given the alleged amounts of robot traffic on Twitter I wonder if they dealt
with robo-tweeting trying to drive them to put particular sites up in their
news page.

------
bcl
I'm not sure what the problem is. I search for Oslo and get current news in
the 'news' section just below the map, general info, etc. If I click on last
24 hours I get even more current news.

------
absconditus
How did we ever survive before Twitter?!

