Twitter: Google Search Changes 'Bad' For Consumers

By Alexei Oreskovic

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Twitter lashed out at changes Google Inc unveiled for its search engine on Tuesday, describing the changes as "bad" for consumers and for Web publishers.

Twitter, a microblogging service that allows its users to broadcast short, 140-character messages to groups of "followers," said Google's changes would make it tougher for people to find the breaking news often shared by users of its service.

"As we've seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter. As a result, Twitter accounts and Tweets are often the most relevant (search) results," the company said in a statement.

"We're concerned that as a result of Google's changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that's bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users," the statement continued.

Twitter's criticism, which came hours after Google announced new features aimed at making search results more personalized, underscored the growing competition between the Web companies. And it comes at a time when Google is facing antitrust scrutiny for favoring its own services within its search results.

A Twitter spokesperson declined to answer a question about whether the company might reach out to antitrust regulators about Google's changes.

"We are a bit surprised by Twitter's comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer," Google said in a public post.

A 2009 agreement, allowing Google to offer a real-time feed of Twitter messages within its search results, expired in July.

Google also said it was abiding by code embedded within certain Twitter messages instructing search engines not to rank the messages within their search results.

Google launched a social network in June, dubbed Google+, that offers many of the capabilities available on Twitter and on Facebook.

With Tuesday's changes to Google's search engine, photos and posts from Google+ will increasingly appear within the search results.

The changes effectively create customized search results for people who are logged in to Google. A person who searches for the term "Hawaii," for example, might find private photos that their friends have shared on Google+ as well as public information about the islands.

Twitter's general counsel, Alex Macgillivray, a former Google attorney, said in a Tweet on Tuesday that Google's changes "warped" Web searches and represented a "bad day for the Internet."

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic in SAN FRANCISCO; additional reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed in BANGALORE; Editing by Matt Driskill)

Comments

[DeanWormer]

11:02 PM on 01/11/2012

Excluding Twitter results is a feature. Thanks, Google.

[marinatha]

09:33 PM on 01/11/2012

Could this be a case of g getting the digs on you, but you not getting thing in return?Sound like it to me.Kinda one sided.What are they giving you ?News is very important, and as time goes on, more so.....

[Jessica Ojeda]

08:38 PM on 01/11/2012

Personalized search would be a pretty cool feature! I'd love to see search results more relevant to me. The only thing is that I'd also like to be able to TURN OFF personalized search and be able to search the internet the "regular" way. And be able to do so WITHOUT logging out of Google. :) What's your take on the "new" Google search?

[Lawngun]

07:07 PM on 01/11/2012

I'm fine with Google's approach. As another commenter suggested, perhaps Twitter can create its own search engine. Then, if I want to know what so-and-so had for breakfast, I can pull it straight up.

[durant]

05:08 PM on 01/11/2012

Twitter cut off Google's access to its update feed in July, when a contract between the two companies expired. See:

http://searchengineland.com/as-deal-with-twitter-expires-google-realtime-search-goes-offline-84175

Here's what The Register has to say about Google's response to Twitter:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/11/google_versus_twitter/

[labender]

04:47 PM on 01/11/2012

Twitter's comments are spot on. If I want to know what my "friends" think, I will (and do) ask them. If I want to find out information about something of interest for me, I want to cast a wide net and filter the results myself according to my own criteria. Google's plan censors what I see and degrades the quality of my search results and if they are actually foolish enough to implement it, it will be a huge step back for the Internet -- until a new company comes along to replace Google search. Because if Google thinks it knows better than I what I am looking for, and it uses its so-called knowledge to alter the results it presents to me, then I will reluctantly have to change the service I use for search, and I doubt I will be alone.

Google search as it is is pretty fantastic. The only reason I can think of for why they would mess with a good thing is that this must be Google's way of trying to force Google+ on us. If it was useful, believe me, we would use it. I have it, I keep trying to find reasons to use it. If you want me to use it, make Google+ better, don't make Google search worse.

[Crystal Rose Love]

02:41 PM on 01/11/2012

I loved the real-time feed of Twitter messages and was curious about why it disappeared from Google searches. Now I know why.

[Zephyra]

02:09 PM on 01/11/2012

Heartily agree about Google narrowing my search options. As a grown-up, I don't want my info bytes premasticated.

[WhatIThinkIs]

01:54 PM on 01/11/2012

Well, Twitter make up your mind: do you want tweets to show up in Google results or don't you?

[Scott Zwartz]

01:52 PM on 01/11/2012

Google is driving me nuts with its changing me over to its NEW format which is crap. I've been able to switch all my email addresses over to my hotmail account and when the day comes that I cannot click on the spinning wheel and then revert to old Google, I am changing over completely to hotmail.

If the same grandiose hubris that is causing Google to destroy Gmail is playing a role in its fight with Twitter, then Google like other monoliths can hit the junk pile. "Good once" does not mean "Good forever." see Kodak -- Genius brought to ruin by arrogance.

[jocco]

03:37 PM on 01/11/2012

By

[Hipster Dufus]

11:57 AM on 01/11/2012

from twitters
to twatters
the Betty got it White
"it sounds like a huge waste of time"

[lissnup]

11:30 AM on 01/11/2012

Google+ needs more than a search niche; it needs a necromancer. This ignorant practice of foisting changes onto users without warning or consultation is a hallmark of all major "free" (free as in payment-by-surrendering-demographic-data, not free as in beer) web applications,with Google, Twitter and FaceBook the prime culprits.

To my mind, they are both as bad as each other, but for Twitter to complain, having shut Google search out while failing to provide a decent alternative search feature itself, is sheer hypocrisy. Not to mention Twitter's secretive censorship-style practice of filtering some users out of search entirely.

I'm already planning my Google divorce, and I switched to an open relationship with Twitter at the start of the year. I'm enjoying having a fling with WordPress right now, and having learned my lesson about placing too much importance on any one platform, in future I will switch in a heartbeat if I so desire. If my experience is any indicator, people will be abandoning pushy, inconsiderate, social media sites in droves before too long.

[egaeus]

10:49 AM on 01/11/2012

Google apparently watched Facebook destroying itself and decided that making a perfectly fine service uglier and more cumbersome was the right direction.

[Zackczar]

10:49 AM on 01/11/2012

This is a weird scenario; a superfluous feature (+ Your World), aimed at helping a failing social network (Google+) threatens an irrelevant service (Twitter). To add to the mix, Twitter turned down a Google purchase a few years back.

Uh, who cares? Twitter has something like a 10% repeat user population. It's for news-makers to break unvetted stories and celebrities to spin bad behavior. Asymmetrical social networks are for *followers*. Who wants to be identified as that?

As an organizational tool for revolution, it's relevant, but is that really a practical demographic? Sure, it runs over SMS, but 70% of the mobile phone market has the web now, and it's only increasing. It has no viable revenue stream.

Twitter is easily emulated by Facebook's 'follow' feature, if that's your thing. And now, they're threatened by Google just pursuing its own interest. Twitter just took $300M from a Sheik or Saudi Prince or something. I think I just heard a death knell toll. I wonder if the co-founder will appear in any more Stoli commercials, in the ultimate act of vanity, having a drink with himself.

And good riddance. Twitter turned down an investment opportunity with my company. I won't lie, there's some schadenfreude in all this, but mostly watching the death rattle of bad companies is a form of justice: companies that don't adapt, die. Look at Blackberry.

[The Joler]

05:37 PM on 01/11/2012

From the number of twitter followers out their it suggests that a significant chunk of the population are happy to be sheep and let others do all the thinking for them.

Twitter's big problem is that it is still struggling to find a way to generate adequate revenue streams out of its service. With the reliability of tweets as an indicator of social opinion decreasing by the day due to astroturfing and similar manipulative tools I question how much longer it is going to exist.

As for google I encourage them to go right ahead with their plans. They are definitiely getting to big and controlling and taking themsleves down a peg and assisting a few other search engine providers will benefit us all.

[Amy Fundenburg]

10:43 AM on 01/11/2012

This is stupid. I thought the sponsored ads were already the customized you-might-be-interested-in-this-by-the-way. I don't need to be second guessed on the basis of past searches, shopping habits, or whatever metrics. Google is adding another hoop to jump thru to get to information I want. I end up scrolling thru the "results" to catch the wiki answer. Then I get the more specific details from wikipedia, go back to google, input the better search terms, then get better results. Bing is a di-... actually, I don't know what bing is. So far it's a billboard for "no results found." Tried it several times and moved on.