In Tiff With Google, Twitter Turns to Wrestling

In the latest episode of public bickering between Twitter and Google over the search engine's new Google+ integration, Twitter general counsel Alex Macgillivray has turned to wrestling.

That's the example he tweeted Wednesday afternoon to demonstrate the inefficiency of Google's latest changes, at least. "Folks asked for examples," he wrote. "Here's what a user searching for '@WWE' will be shone on the new @Google."

Included in the tweet is an image of Google search results that include the World Wrestling Entertainment's website, Google+ page and other relevant Google+ profiles — but no Twitter page.

Twitter criticized Google's new search feature, which it calls Search plus Your World, in a statement Tuesday. "As we've seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter," its statement said. "We're concerned that as a result of Google's changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone."

Google later implied that Twitter was the one that had stopped the search engine from including Tweets in real-time results. An agreement between the two companies, which gave the search engine access to public tweets, ended in July and was not renewed.

Macgillivray's example shows that, at least in some cases, people who are searching for a Twitter handle will no longer necessarily find its page at the top of Google's results. This is also true for handles such as @nytimes and @mashable, though it is not true in all cases. A search for @mittromney, for instance, still returns Twitter results before Google+ results.

We see Macgillivray's point. Shouldn't people find what they are searching for at the top of their results? On the other hand, Google isn't providing a public service. It's a business. Should it be obligated to put Twitter's pages above its own when people are clearly searching for them? Let us know where you stand in the comments.