Bing, you’re not alone: Google adds tweets to search too

Bing got much of the glory this morning at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, when it announced that it was incorporating Twitter’s public stream into its results. But a few hours later, Google crept in with its own announcement.

Google, it turns out, is also pulling Twitter’s public data into its search engine. The company declined to release financial terms of the deal. Google had no prototypes to demo, but here’s what Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience had to say:

At Google, our goal is to create the most comprehensive, relevant and fast search in the world. In the past few years, an entirely new type of data has emerged — real-time updates like those on Twitter have appeared not only as a way for people to communicate their thoughts and feelings, but also as an interesting source of data about what is happening right now in regard to a particular topic.

Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.