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I would imagine Twitter scares Google. For the first time ever, there are questions for which Google isn't the best place to type out your query. "What do peop
by ekanes 17y ago
I would imagine Twitter scares Google. For the first time ever, there are questions for which Google isn't the best place to type out your query.
"What do people think of X?"
"What's happening in _country_"
etc.
Google determines quality based on variables which take time to shake out, in part because that's harder to fake.
Twitter can be gamed, but on the whole it seems to give a decent picture, perhaps because in effect you see many results on the page in front of you, rather than links to the results.
- quantumhobbit 17y agoAs with wikipedia, google can just index twitter. If twitter becomes a true threat(which I personally doubt) google can always tweak PageRank to work with fast evolving twitter news. Instead of searching twitter many people will still search google and click on twitter results if they happen to be relevant.
- pt 17y agoFor that, Google needs the Twitter fire hose. I am not sure if Twitter would be willing to offer that to Google at this time.
- andreyf 17y agoOr they can just look at the topology of the connections and the RSS feeds of the tiny fraction of people representative of the entire thing. Not a big deal, IMO.
- ryanwaggoner 17y agoThere have always been questions for which Google wasn't the best place. Niche forums, obscure government databases, and even things like HN...I routinely use searchyc.com over Google. Twitter is only slightly more relevant to the wider population than any of these...I sincerely doubt that real-time search will ever be more than 1% of the overall search market. There's just not that much that really matters if it's 30 seconds ago vs. 30 minutes ago.