Happy Fourth of July! Google pulled the plug on its realtime search while you were barbecuing some ribs and slamming a few beers out on the patio. Now welcome back to the real world.
So while most of America was wrapped up in its three-day weekend, Google disabled its Realtime Search feature. Coincidentally (or not so coincidentally), it’s also pulling Twitter results from the search.
The rather simple explanation? It turns out Google’s deal with Twitter has expired. According to Search Engine Land, Google stated:
“Since October 2009, Twitter has provided Google with the stream of public tweets for incorporation into their real-time search product and other uses. That agreement has now expired. We continue to provide this type of access to Microsoft, Yahoo!, NTT Docomo, Yahoo! Japan and dozens of other smaller developers. And, we work with Google in many other ways.”
(MORE: There Are Now 200 Million Tweets Being Sent Per Day)
But that doesn’t mean no information from Twitter will ever be available. As Google told Search Engine Land:
“While we will not have access to this special feed from Twitter, information on Twitter that’s publicly available to our crawlers will still be searchable and discoverable on Google.
As for other features such as social search, they will continue to exist, though without Twitter data from the special feed.”
It’s not really clear whether Twitter will renew the deal, or the if two companies will renegotiate the terms. Search Engine Land‘s Danny Sullivan points out that there might be a resolution soon because Twitter, “has largely outsourced the service of Twitter search longer than a few days to Google.”
So what’s the upshot of all of this? Google says it’s also trying to figure out how to throw some Google+ streams into the mix:
“We’ve temporarily disabled google.com/realtime. We’re exploring how to incorporate Google+ into this functionality, so stay tuned.”
Well, well, which social network is the fairest of em’ all now?
MORE: Google Plus… Me? Securing a Google+ Invite Isn’t Easy Yet