Twitter's Real Time Search Threat to Google

I thought it interesting that Google’s CEO would refer to Twitter as the poor man’s email but did not address the growing threat to Google’s search system from Twitter’s real time search ability.

I rarely use Twitter but use http://search.twitter.com/ quite often and I admit probably more than Google and the other search engines. The content is a lot fresher than what one would find on Google News or Yahoo! News. I suspect as the word gets out about the growing reliance on real time search, Twitter will take share from the other search engines.

I think this caught Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft off guard and I am sure all three are scrambling to find a solution to this growing threat to their business models. Twitter is essentially the answer for social search that Yahoo! and others have been seeking to master.

The search engines should look to partner with Twitter to organize the real time search data, index it, and make it searchable on their systems.

For now this is one to watch.