Update: Hey, you're the guy who launched Google Transit! I could use your advice ( See http://www.ridecell.com/gt/about/ http://www.ridecell.com/gt/about/ ). Ca

Update: Hey, you're the guy who launched Google Transit! I could use your advice ( See http://www.ridecell.com/gt/about/ http://www.ridecell.com/gt/about/ ). Can I email you? I think indexing everything in seconds could definitely be a competitive advantage. I haven't tried Yahoo in years and back then it did much worse than Google. If it has improved this much, it makes sense that the competition is at the margins. On the other hand, TechCrunch/Twitter et al's idea of real time search seems to be limited to indexing Twitter and Facebook updates as they happen. The arguments they present amount to "Someone tweeted about a plane crash from the crashed plane". I don't think indexing such tweets is going to be Google's edge in search. OTOH I can think of using such information to generate Google Alerts being very useful for some people.