Google Search: First real competitor
Google's dominance over how we search and consume information may be meeting its first real challenge. This article at GigaOM (http://bit.ly/GeZ7C) explains why. And no it's not Wolfram Alpha or something..
One of the other things that come out of this is; Twitter does not have one coffee shop. It has hundreds and thousands of them, with new ones opening every minute. So how do I know which coffee shop to go? And more importantly, How do I know what conversation is taking place at which coffee shop?
It would be interesting to see, what kind of features Twitter's rumored search engine comes up with. If this is just a replica of Google Search, in the sense it just shoves keywords into a BigTable data structure, then it would be no use at all. Go to a real coffee shop; not the sluty Cafe Coffee Day ones but a real one like India Coffee House, take a pen and paper and then try to create an index out of all the keywords you overhear or recognize. I bet you will give up. But you can of course gauge trends, and that's what Twitter Trends is already doing with Twitter.
