The week we have finally seen some concrete developments from Microsoft and Google with regard to the Holy Grail that is real time search. At the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco last week, both companies have shed some light on their plans.

There have been many rumours flying around recently regarding the development of real time search but now, during the opening days of the 2009 Web 2.0 summit, both Microsoft and Google have opened up.

Firstly, Qi Lu (President of Microsoft’s Online Services Division) confirmed rumours that Microsoft had struck a deal with both Twitter and Facebook to use Tweets and status updates within Bing.

Bing’s new Twitter functionality is available at http://www.bing.com/twitter (US only I’m afraid) and shows a tag cloud of the current most popular topics along with the ability to search Twitter which returns the most recent Tweets around your search as well as details of popular links that are being passed around.

This was closely followed by Google’s Marrisa Mayer (Vice President of Search Products and User Experience) announcing that Google will be launching its product, incorporating Tweets directly into Google SERPs within the next few months.

Obviously, comparisons can’t be made until both products are live (no doubt in beta), but things are certainly hotting up regarding real time. I, along with many, wait with baited breath to see both how Google will incorporate real time into its sometimes already cluttered results pages, and also how users will take to this new information on both search engines.

This is, of course, a false mock up. More information from Google can be found at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/rt-google-tweets-and-updates-and-search.html