Twitter becomes mutual friend of Google, Microsoft

(AP) -- Refusing to be upstaged, Google's Internet search index will include public updates from Twitter's communications stream.

Google announced the Twitter deal on its blog Wednesday, less than three hours after Microsoft trumpeted its own Twitter partnership at a San Francisco technology conference.

Had it been exclusive, Microsoft might have been able to lure traffic away from Google because tracking Twitter's updates is becomingly an increasingly popular way to find out what people are talking about at any given moment.

Now both Google and Microsoft's search engine, Bing, hope to prove they are the best way to find and analyze Twitter's messages, also known as tweets.

Neither Google nor Microsoft disclosed how much they are paying Twitter.

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