So it seems that Google, the startup that nimbly side-stepped all challenges from entrenched search providers, is a lumbering giant now, unable to update its results as fast as tweets are coming. Rather appropriate that this was published in a newspaper where the term “New York minute” was coined.

One wonders though, what advantages would it bring for Google to be able to index every single online event in real time. Personally, I’d rather that Google spends its R&D dollars continuously improving contextual searches over being able to cover more stuff by the second. It’s good that Bing is getting increased market share (even if it seem to be at Yahoo’s expense); increased competition only brings about more innovation.

And as for expectations that Google (and all other search engines for that matter) should in fact be able to index by the second to be “good enough” for users, the ideal response would be this little rant by Louis CK:

My favorite comment: “How long does it take for the world to owe him something he didn’t know exist 30 seconds ago?”. Touche.

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