In the land of search, Google is king. There is no doubting that, and there has been no room to doubt that for quite some time now. However, with the rise in popularity of Twitter, Facebook, and other social applications, Google has not been able to rule the realm of real-time.
Example#1- If I Google “Comcast”, a quick scan of the first page of results causes my brain to process the following info: Comcast’s website is www.comcast.com, there are several Comcast locations in my area, Wikipedia has a Comcast article, and I can view a video of a Comcast technician sleeping on a couch on YouTube.
Example #2- If I search “Comcast” on the Twitter feed, a whole different set of information is revealed to me: someone’s Comcast bill is $150 and they think it is absurd, more than three people hate Comcast “with a passion”, Comcast is offering free premium shows online, and it took Comcast 22 days to install Evan’s cable, but only three days to respond to this blog article.
Spot the difference? Google has built a kingdom around their ever evolving search algorithm. In order for any one webpage to rise to the coveted #1 position, certain criteria must be met, and a plethora of factors can affect its overall score. How long has the website been around? How long is the domain registered for? How many external links point to this site? What is its traffic? How reliable is the content? How rich is the content? You get the pictures.
Google has perfected the science of crawling, organizing, and outputting information. Crawling, organizing, and rendering- however fast it may be- still takes time. Someone texted me earlier today to ask if Kanye West was dead. My first response was to ask google for confirmation, where no mention of the egomaniac’s passing could be found. Second stop? Twitter. It was flooded with news of Kanye’s death. For a very brief moment in time, tens of thousands of people were talking about Kanye West’s alleged death.
And Google had no idea. (Searching “Kanye West” on Google now yields results about a Twitter hoax)
More and more people are placing an increased value on real-time search. Enter Bing. 
Bing’s search engine market share has quickly grown to over 10%. It launched in June with 0% market share… It is a rapidly growing beast.
Despite it’s sometimes gimmicky strategies (You mean I can really get $1.50 back for purchasing a $250 cardigan from J Crew? Sweeeeet….), Bing has made some fairly strategic moves to position themselves as the number one search engine by 2015. What sticks out the most, though, is its proactive decision to partner with Facebook and Twitter. Bing will now license data streams (Hellloooooo Revenue!) from Twitter. And remember that $240 Million investment from Uncle Microsoft to Facebook two years ago? It’s all coming to a head now.
Perhaps Google will always rule mainstream search. It is an ever changing encyclopedia of information whose heart has a slow, resounding rhythm.
The NY Times could tell how popular Superbowl Commercials were via Twitter, Pizza Hut and Comcast qualm would-be cyber revolutions before they begin, and companies monitor the general public’s sentiment on a day-to-day basis. Real time search is here to stay, and it is growing at the pace of a TMNT. It’s life blood is circulated by a frantic, fickle, mass of millions who move at the speed of light and can change the tide of information in a frenzied heartbeat.
And Microsoft has that pulsating heartbeat in the palm of its hand.
***UPDATE****
About 5 minutes after I published this, I went to Tech Crunch’s site to see what was new. This is what was new.
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