Google shuts down realtime search engine as contract with Twitter expires

As noted by Mashable, Google has shut down its realtime search engine, cleverly dubbed "Google Realtime Search," following its contract with Twitter expiring this past Saturday, July 2, 2011. Google's Realtime Search allows users to search for content as it happens and it included Twitter integration for tweets. 

However, today when attempting to access http://www.google.com/realtime, users will receive a 404 error page. In addition, the option to use realtime search has been removed from the sidebar on Google.com. 

According to the report, Google was forced to shut down Realtime Search because its contract with Twitter that allowed the search giant to have access to a full feed of all public tweets expired on July 2. The original agreement between Google and Twitter dates back to October 2009.

“While we will not have access to this special feed from Twitter, information on Twitter that's publicly available to our crawlers will still be searchable and discoverable on Google,” the company said Monday. “Our vision is to have google.com/realtime include Google+ information along with other realtime data from a variety of sources.”

It's not yet clear whether Google is re-negotiating a contract with Twitter or if the search giant has elected to include Google+ posts instead.

Are you going to miss Google Realtime Search?