I never believed I would see the day when Google was described as archaic, old, not forward thinking enough. How times change in worldwidewebworld. However, there is a constant, ever increasing voice saying they are and they have missed the boat in “real time” search. Real time is interesting, it taps into the conciousness of the nation, the world even. It taps into what the public is talking about now, what they are really feeling, so it will be massively exciting in the run up to the World Cup and the General Elections in 2010.
Google on the other hand taps into our memory, our flow of actions that have previously happened, but which are not happening or potentially not happening right now. As such there is a certain sense of reliability with Google, which you cannot get with real-time search. We all know the negative stories about Twitter and Swine Flu, social escalation of a crisis which could have easily been quashed if you followed some of Google’s cracking Swine flu maps.
The debate rages on. I for one am going to continue to track trends and cool stuff on Twitter, whilst searching for what I really want on Google.
