
Google Loses Access to Twitter Stream, Suspends Realtime Search - tilt
http://mashable.com/2011/07/04/google-realtime-search-suspended/
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yaix
"Loses access"? It sounds more like they let it expire on purpose. And to me
it sounds like a strong message to Twitter and everybody, that G is really
serious about G+. "We don't need Twitter, we have our own stream pretty soon."

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Lewisham
I read it the other way; that Twitter were upset about G+ and wouldn't re-
sign.

I noted a [deleted] post at the bottom of this thread, where the replies
indicate that "Twitter couldn't have known about G+", hence I guess the
[deleted] post had similar sentiments to me. Google having social aspirations
has been well-known for a long time. I could very much imagine Twitter writing
a contract which says that the stream was only available to Google for as long
as Google wasn't directly competing with Twitter. Google couldn't sign such a
contract. Google+ is direct Twitter competition.

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reustle
Hasn't buzz always been direct competition?

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william42
Yes, but the contract just ended. It wasn't terminated, it just wasn't
renewed. And + is a much more «all-in» bet than Buzz was.

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jcampbell1
Did anyone actually notice and give a damn? I personally remember those
animated twitter stream search results as being a useless distraction, and I
am quite glad they are gone. I think google realized they were of little
relevance to the typical searcher and Google now has enough data to decide the
results aren't worth paying much for. In fact, Google has already long since
pulled the realtime search results from the primary serps.

~~~
ben1040
I personally find Twitter to mostly be noise, so I really got no value out of
that real time stream result. If I really wanted to search Twitter results,
I'd have gone to the Twitter search page, not Google.

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checker
Live search was awesome to find out about breaking news before even the news
wires got it. When there was a bomb scare in Times Square, I remember reading
the tweets and getting some great information.

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buss
This headline is misleading. The contract Google had with Twitter expired on
July 2, 2011. There hasn't been a statement by either company indicating why
the contract wasn't extending.

Can we please avoid this sort of sensationalism?

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smanek
Did you read the article? They had quotes from both Google and Twitter saying
the contract wasn't extended

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michael_dorfman
Yes, but neither quote offers an explanation as to _why_ the contract wasn't
extended.

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smanek
_Our vision is to have google.com/realtime include Google+ information along
with other realtime data from a variety of sources._

The subtext seems to be about as clear a reason as you can hope for from a
giant corporation's PR dept.

~~~
michael_dorfman
And what would the corresponding statement have been if they had been cut off
from Twitter against their will?

Exactly the same. The quotes offer no evidence as to the motivation.

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justhw
What is the real value behind the real time search stuff? I never actulally
saw anything important, just 100s of people saying the same thing with #bangs.
I'm not being ignorant. Englighten me. This is just a question.

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hollerith
Someone does not know what a hash bang is.

~~~
derrida
<joke> Of course, a hash bang is a hash functor orgy. </joke>

Yes, I think they meant #-tag

Hash bang (#!) is used to specify to the operating system where to find the
binary to execute a script.

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Maro
I never had any use for this Twitter/real-time feature of Google. Perhaps that
was the general conclusion so they just dropped it?

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JeremyBanks
Personally, I found it very useful for following stories as they were
developing, or to see if other people were having issues with a service when I
was. Having this integrated into my normal Google searches was convenient, but
I guess using Twitter's search directly isn't terrible.

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jgilliam
Why would you write a contract in October of 2009 to expire on July 2nd? Such
an odd date.

~~~
vaksel
original contract was probably written on May 2009, and then it took them a
few months to sign the thing.

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selectnull
It would seem Google wants a war on multiple fronts. Those who have tried that
strategy in the past have generally lost.

~~~
stanley
In a way you are right, but I think this approach also provides them with
leverage to hedge their bets.

The main differentiating factor in this case is their competitors are focused
primarily on solving one problem, whereas Google is attempting to solve a
multitude of problems in an attempt to win through convergence. That is to
say, their solutions may not be as polished, but they are all in one place,
presented to you in an accessible and convenient matter.

~~~
selectnull
You may be proven right, it would certainly seem G+ has huge potential:
everyone I know so far, and most of the reviews on the net are very positive.
It will integrate into all the others google's products, and with that, google
will be the king of social.

But that's not the point I tried to make. Based on the post, my opinion was
that Google did not want to renew the deal with twitter (and vice versa) which
is strange. They are at war already with everybody else (ms, apple, oracle,
facebook) and don't need another enemy.

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acg
I wouldn't be surprised if this is more about Twitter's other customers rather
than Twitter's attitude to Google+. There are many who would pay a lot to get
one over Google.

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kristopher
Twitter Firehose was never about Realtime Search but more about adding an
additional signal to their crawler and perhaps to Google News.

When the Firehose was enabled, it was not surprising to see GoogleBot
immediately after a new link was posted via Twitter.

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entrepreneurial
Wonder why they quit it? You can also search other sites (facebook, blogger,
etc) using Realtime Search.

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bane
I actually noticed that the realtime search had more or less stopped showing
up in my results anyway...which was nice because I always just ignored them
anyways.

Did anybody find them useful? Or is maybe that's the reason Google is letting
that go?

It's too bad because it's clear an enormous development effort had gone into
making it possible.

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Hisoka
And again, Twitter hasn't figured out a business model yet. No wonder Jack
Dorsey left to do Square

~~~
jmonegro
He hasn't left yet.

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klbarry
This is HUGE for SEO. One of the biggest talked about and tested things in
2011 was Twitter's effect on rankings.

