Google has sniped at Twitter after the latter's comments criticising the new Google Search plus Your World features.
The new search feature returns personal Google+ data and pages when the searcher is logged in to their Google account, something that Twitter said "warps" search results.
"We were a little surprised by Twitter's comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer and since then we have observed their rel=nofollow instructions," posted the search giant on Google+ (of course).
This note implies that Twitter pages are no longer crawled in Google searches since the two companies parted ways in July 2011 - which isn't entirely true because Twitter profile pages regularly show up in searches for celebrities or, ahem, your own name.
Speak sense
As ParisLemon points out, these are exactly the kinds of pages that would sit perfectly in Google's new 'people and places' box out, but the search giant does not seem willing to allow anything but Google+ pages to show up here - and that smacks of anti-competitive tactics.
Google chairman Eric Schmidt told Marketing Land that "of course" Google would be willing to talk with Facebook and Twitter about the new Google+ search results.
He said, "The core question is, 'Would we be willing to [include Facebook and Twitter], and the answer is, 'We'll be happy to talk to them about it'." Frustratingly, he would say little else about the situation.
Some commentators are becoming increasingly concerned about Google's dominance and its ability to push its own products via the wildly successful search engine.
No hint of a snarky retort from the Zuckerberg clan yet, but we'll be keeping an eye out.
