Google Realtime, Gone But Not Forgotten

You don’t miss your water ‘til your well runs dry, and this was embarrassingly highlighted earlier in the month when the world at large struggled to find Gaddafi related news in a post-Realtime Google. With some dubbing this years’ Arab Spring a Social Media Revolution, a lack of real time confirmations had many speculating that the news of his death was false.

After watching events such as those in Egypt play out in real time, it felt a step backwards to then find Google’s Realtime search option no longer available. In real terms this only meant a delay of 30 minutes for search engines to start feeding the confirmation of Colonel Gaddafi’s death, but it seemed more the principle of this inadequacy that frustrated online news chasers.

But as Online Campaign Director at homejames Paul Roberts pointed out, “it shows where we’ve come to when Google are getting berated for having results half an hour old!”

Ready for a Return

The Realtime function, predominantly consisting of public Twitter updates, disappeared from Google’s search options on 2nd July this year when their contract with Twitter relating to this data expired. Though Google have announced its return, without the Twitter deal in place it’s hard to see what exactly it will offer, especially since it will be relying on the same sources as when the function was halted back in July.

Only time will tell if Google will manage to successfully re-introduce a tweet-free Realtime search, but for now at least it’s absence has very much raised awareness of the need for such a service, if not our reliance on these relatively new technologies.