• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, July 5, 2011

While the implications remain unclear, Google and Twitter appear to have let their real-time search agreement expire. "No word yet on whether the two sides have entered negotiations [for another partnership], but when they do, the fate of humanity will certainly be hanging in the balance," jokes Engadget. "I'd say we have a bit of a standoff," writes Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan.

"While Twitter may need Google to continue offering archive search, Google also potentially needs Twitter in another way ... Google may have lost some of the data it has recently been using to bring social signals into its results." Still, "With Google+ [which only debuted last week] the company doesn't need Twitter as badly as it did two years ago," notes Business Insider.

"If Google+ is truly ramping up for a fight with Twitter, it's no wonder the companies aren't working together on this product any longer," writes SocialBeat. "Google says that it will relaunch Real Time Search with information from Google+ as well as third-party sources ... But as long as it's got Google+, it can drive a harder bargain with Twitter," BI adds.

What's more, "One reason I'd expect Twitter would do a deal with Google sometime soon is that otherwise, people largely have no way to locate tweets that are older than a few days," Search Engine Land's Sullivan adds. "Twitter has largely outsourced the service of Twitter search longer than a few days to Google, a deliberate decision so that Twitter could focus on other search features.

Meanwhile, "Google Realtime Search started with Twitter search results and quickly expanded to include Yahoo Answers, news articles, MySpace updates and public Facebook Page updates," Mashable writes. "A slew of social services, including Quora and Gowalla, were later added to the product ... These other social search features will continue to exist."

"In contrast," The Register notes, "Twitter's deals with the likes of Microsoft's Bing and Yahoo search engines remain ongoing."