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Google, Twitter search deal: Did micro-blabbing site gag racy tweets to satisfy ad giant?

Smutty material reportedly set to be covered up

Comment Google will start displaying real-time tweets on its search pages after a deal was struck with Twitter.

The change is currently only in the US and, at the moment at least, only on mobile devices. But in order to have access to its real-time feed Google is seemingly paying Twitter a standard flat licensing fee.

If you search on a specific term, related tweets have started appearing on Google search pages, underneath news articles and the top search term. Things change if you search for a hashtag i.e. include a '#' in front of anything. In that case, tweets are produced in a sideways-scrollable box up the top.

What may be more interesting than the fact that Google is publishing tweets, however, is the hoops that Twitter may have had to jump through in order to strike another deal with the ad giant.

If you search on a normal word, tweets appear down the page; search on a hashtag and they appear up top

The deal comes four years after Twitter ended its original agreement with Google in 2011.

Since then, Twitter restricted its data-stream to three companies – Gnip, DataSift and NTT – and forced other companies to pay them to get access to it (infuriating a growing base of developers).

And then, just last month, Twitter bought Gnip for an estimated $200m and shut down the other agreements, saying companies would now have to license its feed direct from Twitter.

Google power

Did Google force Twitter's hand into a $200m purchase and a re-ordering of its entire revenue stream? Most likely, yes.

Along with the news that Google will run tweets on its pages comes claim that Twitter will start booting off users who share sexually explicit material. Twitter has long been the only social network t0 allow smut and, as a result, has been strongly embraced by the adult industry – to the tune of an estimated 10 million profiles.

Until recently, Twitter maintained a very strong free speech and libertarian philosophy and approach to its service, refusing to take down offensive material and fighting US government efforts to grab its data. That approach extended to pornography and there remains no policy against pornographic images – dubbed "sensitive content" – on the service.

However, according to reports, that's about to change in line with a number of recent announcements from Twitter about "tackling abuse" on its service.

Google maintains a policy on limiting or restricting the provision of violent or sexually explicit material and regularly removes it from its search results as well as its other services such as YouTube.

Now it looks as though Google's financial muscle is directly impacting the policies of the world's second-biggest social media company. So when you see those tweets appearing, be thankful because you will be seeing the nice, clean sanitized version of the internet that Google wants you to enjoy. ®

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