Google goes into real-time

Posted on 15/01/2010 by Rich Adams
Bing, Google

It may be moving into software, operating systems and mobile phones, but Google clearly still intends to keep its search engine fresh by creating a real time function – search is its bread and butter, after all!

This means, rather than undertaking a single search, Google will continue to trawl the internet and deliver the latest social media content as it's posted online. You can even filter the results down to scan for microblogs like twitter.

The concept certainly seems rather impressive/ imposing – depending on whether you work for a rival engine or not. They even have a star studded line-up of partners on board, such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace – it’s like a who’s who of the social media world.

Google's vice-president of engineering, Vic Gundotra, stated… "Information is being posted at a pace I have never seen before… In this information environment, seconds matter."

Not to be outdone (although many suspect they will be) Bing has also launched its own real-time service. Their version, however, only has twitter on board and doesn’t embed the links on the actual search page.

While not every search term on Google will trigger the real-time function, only those it considers relevant, it will still come in handy if searching for things like tickets: where offers can be shown as they are uploaded.