Google to launch micro-blogging search engine?
Rumours fly about the possibility of a Google micro-blogging universal search engine
The web has been a buzz this week about reported evidence from search engine
Google launching a microblogging search engine that will index content from popular services such as
Twitter.
Micro-blogging has seen phenomenal growth over the last twelve months, with Twitter in particular growing in size by some 1700 per cent. Since the launch of Twitter?s own search functionality, there has been much speculation that the micro-blogging service was soon to rival Google.
Google has spoken openly in the past about the potential and benefit of integrating micro-blogging search results. At a
recent press event in May 2009, Marissa Mayer, Google?s chief of search products commented, ?What?s really happening in Twitter is that there are a lot of clues in it in terms of what?s happening that?s interesting overall. It?s similar to what we see in Google Trends where people will often type what they?re interested in into the search box, and w can make some predictions off of that."
Mayer continued, "So, we are interested in being able to offer, for example, micro-blogging and micro-messaging in our search. Particularly in Blog Search and possibly in Web Search, but we don?t have any particular plans to announce.?
The recent chatter came from the unofficial
Google Operating System Blog posting a screenshot showing the search engine?s translation console asking for translations for text relating to micro-blogging and search:
?Recent updates about QUERY. This is the MicroBlogsearch Universal result group header text. A Microblog is a blog with very short entries. Twitter is the popular service associated with this format.?
The rumours have yet to be confirmed by either Google or Twitter, although the companies have reportedly been in talks before; both about search partnership and acquisition. Google has always been very open about developments coming from the company, taking to their
official blogs to make announcements normally before rumours start flying.
There were unsubstantiated
rumours in April 2009 that Google was in talks to purchase Twitter. The search company did purchase micro-blogging service
Jaiku in October 2007 before the 140 character boom.
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