Twitter and Facebook threatened by Google Plus?

I read an interesting article in The Telegraph today, which to be honest isn't my usual source of information as I think as a newspaper it's about as credible as The Daily Mail, and we all know what that's like. Anyway, the headlines were "Facebook and Twitter tell Google 'Don't Be Evil'". I was immediately intrigued, because as you know I use a lot of Google stuff and I'm not a fan of Facebook. Twitter I can take or leave, these days mostly preferring to leave it in favour of Google Plus, and it is the latter that has apparently attracted the attention of Facebook and Twitter.

Rather than beat about the bush here I'll simply quote the opening paragraph of the article as it says everything that needs to be said. You can read the full article by clicking on the source link.

"Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have created a new web tool to direct users’ attention to what it considers are biased search results from Google. The browser add-on, which only works for Firefox users, is called 'Don't be evil' (a reference to one of Google's early mottoes), and has been created in an attempt to stop the search giant from promoting its own social network, Google+, to the top of people's web searches." - (source: The Telegraph).

Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, teamed up over the weekend...

This has all kicked off after Twitter refused to allow Google to index its tweets in the summer following due to a lack of agreement over terms. Incidentally Twitter still has an agreement with Microsoft and allows Bing to index its tweets. Google has been accused of promoting its own services over rivals, in particular Google Plus posts which now show up in search results. In an apparent backlash engineers from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, teamed up over the weekend to work with some developers from Firefox to create an add-on for the browser which will presumably screen out Google Plus posts.

Well hang on just a second. To me this smacks of hypocracy on the part of Twitter and Facebook. Mainly Twitter in this case! To begin with, Twitter's tweets and Facebook content COULD appear in Google's search results along with Google Plus posts, that is if they were prepared to play ball. But no, they'd rather stay within their own walled garden, then bitch and whine when Google opens up its own social content to search results. I'm only surprised that Microsoft haven't put their weight behind this campaign against Google as well and produced an add-on for Internet Explorer (not that anyone will be using that in a few years time by the way Chrome is gobbling up the market share!).

It's all pretty pathetic really and in my opinion Facebook and Twitter are obviously threatened by Google Plus if they're prepared to go to these lengths to keep Google Plus posts from public view. And as for Alex Macgillivray's comment about this being a "bad day for the Internet" and accusing Google of "warping" search, presumably it was a good day for the Internet when Google indexed tweets from Twitter?

Twitter and Facebook threatened by Google Plus?

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