Last week, we commented on how Twitter plans to improve it’s search feature and ultimately become more like Google, but it appears that Google is thinking about adding micro-blogging to its search and becoming more like Twitter.
It was implied in an interview with Google’s CEO last week, that they are planning on jumping on the social networking bandwagon and possibly integrating micro-blogging into its search engine in an attempt to make more money.
By using the term ‘integrate’ this implies that Google does not simply intend to add Twitter posts to its search results, but that it aspires to offer some sort of micro-blogging service of its own, that would to some degree, compete with the likes of Twitter.
It has been interpreted that ‘integrating’ micro-blogging could have three possible meanings:
- Google may add ‘micro-blogs’ as a search option, as it has done already for news, images and maps etc.
- Google could use micro-blogging to help keep its Pagerank algorithm up to date by taking into account the fresh and real time inbound links that are being obtained by people including these links in their blog posts.
- Google could add its own micro-blogging type service, so instead of the “What are you doing?” that appears on Twitter, it would be “What are you searching for?” on Google.
This would mean that users could keep their Google contacts up to date with their status and allow them to know what they are searching for. This would consequently allow the contacts the opportunity to offer help and advice in finding the information or answer that is being searched for.
The exact phrasing that was used within the interview has been posted on the Los Angeles Times Blog, which implies that Google would be interested in the concept of micro-blogging and micro-messaging within their search, but there are no plans to implement these ideas in the near future.
This insinuates that a feature like Twitter could possibly be on the cards and the idea is floating around, but they have not yet made any concrete plans to announce.
It seems that Google are playing their cards very close to their chest on this one, we will just have to wait and see what happens.
