Microsoft has announced that it will add live updates from micro-blogging service Twitter to its search engine - Bing. Following that, Google too announced plans for live Twitter updates integration in its search engine. At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Microsoft mentioned about its public access to public Twitter feed and also got Bing Twitter search beta; only for U.S. residents as of now. Google promised to roll out Twitter integration in its search engine "in the coming months".

Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft's online services group, said, "We are going to get access to all of the public Twitter information in real time." Bing will also get the Facebook status feed at a later date. Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer, Facebook, said, "We are giving Bing a feed of data made open to everyone. No money exchanged hands. We are not trying to make money on data."

Bing Twitter search comprehends text of a Twitter update and any shortened links tagged with it. Domain names are displayed after the shortened links mentioned in the Twitter update. However, Bing Twitter search throws up results after indexing only a week's Twitter updates. Protected and deleted Twitter updates won't be displayed into Bing Twitter search since it shows up results after indexing data of public Twitter Feed.

So, if there's a Twitter update: Apple updates Mac Mini Lineup http://bit.ly/crLDU, Bing Twitter will show it up as "Apple updates Mac Mini Lineup http://bit.ly/crLDU (techtree.com)".

Back in April, Google and Twitter were reportedly involved in preliminary discussion over real-time search and product search. Marissa Mayer, vice president of Search Products and User Experience, stated in a blog post on the Official Google Blog that Google's search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data. Basically, Google is finally bending to include indexed data for real-time search.

We know not what's going on in the minds of Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone. Twitter had acquired Summize.com and integrated the search engine to show it as Twitter Search. A few months down the lane, we'd get to see real-time content to seep into mainstream search. With this integration and more people joining Twitter, one major issue has been burning since a while - spam. Not to worry about it anymore since Twitter has already pulled up its socks to fight spam.

Once again, the cold war between the search engine giants has begun by bringing a real-time flavor in their searches. What's in for users? Real-time data along with the regular search.

Financial aspects of the respective deals aren't disclosed as yet.