Disclaimer – I’m a Google Harlot.  With minor exception, if Google offers it, I use it.  Yup, I’m on Wave (along with most of PRBC and BTW,  if anyone’s got a few extra invites, we’ve still got some holes to fill), I used Google Docs back before it was Docs (Writely was acquired by Google and then morphed into Docs), Maps, Earth, pretty much everything.  I usually prefer Google search to Twitter search for finding old tweets – a username or two, a keyword, isolate the search to twitter.com and frequently I can dig out old tweets with minimal difficulty.

So Microsoft’s Beta launch of the Bing Twitter search was a disappointment for me.  I had been unimpressed with any of Microsoft’s search engines (The original Microsoft search/MSN search, Live, Bing, meh….). So I had little hope.  The one big selling point a proper Twitter search would give it a longer memory.

I’d only tinkered with the Bing Twitter search when I saw a preview of Keith’s post and really got into it. I realized the service was, indeed, as he describes.

Then Google decided to make it rain in Redmond — and announced their own Twitter search arrangement, and on their blog at that.  Game over.

What’s great about this whole scenario is that, whether or not you’re in the Google Harlot boat with me, Google has planted their flag as the leader of search, even if it’s not the best it’s part of our culture.  Unless Bing can deliver with Twitter search, and fast, we’ll all be holding our breathe for Google’s Twitter tool.

And in case anyone doubts Google’s ability to already handle Twitter searches – Compare the search results for my username and the #MNH hashtag (a pub crawl we held a few months ago):  Twitter, Bing and Google (Google’s limited to results only from Twitter.com).  They’re already providing better content — add in a good Google interface and presentation and it’s a done deal.

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