• Google Realtime Search Goes Offline As The Deal With Twitter Expires

    // Gradly // blog, google, News, Rants & Raves, Social Networks, Tech., Twitter No Responses

    Google’s agreement with Twitter to carry its results has expired, taking with it much of the content that was in the service with it. Google has this explanation:

    Since October of 2009, we have had an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results through a special feed, and that agreement expired on July 2.

    While we will not have access to this special feed from Twitter, information on Twitter that’s publicly available to our crawlers will still be searchable and discoverable on Google.

    As for other features such as social search, they will continue to exist, though without Twitter data from the special feed.

    Our vision is to have google.com/realtime include Google+ information along with other realtime data from a variety of sources.

    Google Realtime Search had carried content from a variety of services beyond Twitter, including Facebook fan page updates, Quora and Gowalla content, Check out the full source list:

    • Twitter tweets
    • Google News links
    • Google Blog Search links
    • Newly created web pages
    • Freshly updated web pages
    • FriendFeed updates
    • Jaiku updates
    • Identi.ca updates
    • TwitArmy updates
    • Google Buzz posts
    • MySpace updates
    • Facebook fan page updates
    • Quora
    • Gowolla
    • Plixi
    • Me2day
    • Twitgoo

    Still, as said, Twitter was the by far the most dominant content within the service. It’s unclear why the agreement was allowed to expire. Twitter has this to reply:

    Since October 2009, Twitter has provided Google with the stream of public tweets for incorporation into their real-time search product and other uses. That agreement has now expired. We continue to provide this type of access to Microsoft, Yahoo!, NTT Docomo, Yahoo! Japan and dozens of other smaller developers. And, we work with Google in many other ways.

    For its part, Google said:

    Twitter has been a valuable partner for nearly two years, and we remain open to exploring other collaborations in the future.

    Twitter has largely outsourced the service of Twitter search longer than a few days to Google, a deliberate decision so that Twitter could focus on other search features, such as its new Top Tweets feature

    You can certainly understand why Google+ has become even more important to the service now. While Google has gotten by largely without social signals from Facebook, having its own data from Google+ gives it insulation if it now has to get by without Twitter signals, as well.

    [via searchengineland]

  • GoDaddy Sold for $2.25 Billion By Three Private Equity Firms

    // Gradly // Acquisition, blog, News, Rants & Raves No Responses

    GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain registrar, has been sold to three private equity firms in a deal valued at $2.25 billion, the company announced late Friday.

    Private equity firms KKR & Co., Silver Lake Partners and Technology Crossover Ventures sealed the deal, where they agreed to take on GoDaddy’s debt, which the amounts are roughly half the value of the deal.

    “We are partnering with KKR, Silver Lake and TCV because of their technology expertise, their understanding of web-based businesses and because their values align with ours,” GoDaddy Chief Executive and founder Bob Parsons .

    Company founder and CEO Bob Parsons predicted further growth of GoDaddy under its new ownership. He said to the Los Angeles Times, “What these guys see is a company with a lot more potential internationally and more potential to make partnerships and acquisitions. They’ll help us finance and they’ll help us recruit talent.”

    GoDaddy, has seen significant growth over the past three years, with sales rising by 25% to $947 million from 2009 to 2010. The company projected growth for 2011 to continue that trend, quoting a figure of $1.1 billion for the year.

    The New York Times, in an article quotes Parsons as saying “This isn’t a sale. It’s a partnership that’s reinvesting in Go Daddy.” The article added that Parsons “will become executive chairman of the company after the sale closes, and he will remain a large stakeholder,” but it’s still unclear whether Parsons will retain a controlling interest in the company. GoDaddy’s own press release doesn’t address that crucial fact, either. We’ve contacted Parsons’ office for verification.

    A spokesperson from the Go Daddy Group, Inc. responded to mashable, stating that, “Mr. Parsons will continue to be the largest single shareholder, even after the agreement is finalized. This does not mean he has 51% — it means, as an individual, he would have as much ownership as any one entity.”

  • Microsoft is About to Announce a Partnership Deal with Chinese Search Company Baidu

    // Gradly // blog, Microsoft, Rants & Raves, Rumors No Responses

    According to sources in Chinese press, Microsoft is close to announcing a deal with Chinese search giant Baidu. Both parties will officially sign a strategic agreement at the end of this week, both sides will co-operation in the field of search, but specific details of cooperation is not revealed. Insiders speculated that Microsoft’s Bing (bing) using Baidu PPC services provided. More details roughly translated below:

    In 2006, Microsoft has reached an agreement with Baidu, Microsoft MSN, Live, and other Microsoft partner Web site to start the search service provided by Baidu bid ranking services. It is known that the Beta version of Microsoft’s bing was introduced in June 2009 in China, in China’s market share is still very limited, according to Analysys think tank Enfodesk industry database data display, in the last quarter of 2011 China search engine operators market share, Baidu accounted for 75.8%, Google accounted for 19.2% in China. Total market share to both 95%.

    Since “Google out of China” when an event occurs, Microsoft has been looking for partners in China, to help make Microsoft a major force in one of China Internet search market. Microsoft Senior VP Ya-Qin Zhang said Beijing in Asia mainly focused on Bing Microsoft (Bing) English version of the research and development, and there are relatively few personnel engaged in research and development of the Chinese version of bing.

    Reports also suggest a deal could be announced as early as next week.

    It looks like Baidu is taking over the paid ads on Bing China, and Bing will provide the English language results for Baidu. Bing is a tiny player in China’s search market. Perhaps by striking a partnership with the biggest search engine there, it can gain some traction. The deal could be announced next week.

    Microsoft has recently acquired the Internet communication service Skype for $8.5 billion.