Google is up against a new rival in something of a surprise development in Russia. Twitter is partnering with Yandex – the biggest search engine in Russia – to ensure that the Russian company gets a noteworthy boost to real-time search facilities. The data that streams via Twitter’s messaging service is to be made available to Yandex, via a firehose, so that Russian users can search it. The changes and the effect of an expanded marketplace in Russia could also have a significant, positive impact on businesses, as small and large companies will want to take advantage to access premium web hosting services.

Just like Google, which recently announced its search engine was to be linked to its social networking site Google+, Yandex has just made public its plans to launch a new program. This would also incorporate additional data into its search function, which would be gleaned from social networking.

In many ways the partnership is ironic, as Google had a previous partnership with Twitter, which it ended. As a result, Google effectively brought about the end of its proprietary real-time research product and today it still lags behind Yandex in the Russian market.

Twitter and Google have been at odds with each other for some considerable time. Google’s recent announcement about integration with Google+ brought a hail of criticism from Twitter along the lines that Facebook and Twitter would both be excluded from Google’s new ‘personalised’ search results because the company would prioritise Google+ information. Now the Russians have stepped in to make the most of the situation for the home market and inevitably will seek to further extend Yandex’s lead over Google.

As things stand, around 60% of Russian internet users access content via the home search engine, although the rival newcomer made slight advances to gain around one quarter of the total market. Undoubtedly Twitter is gaining a significant fee for the firehose it will provide, in the context that Microsoft is paying some $30 million (about £19 million) annually for the same benefit. However, there remains some controversy about companies who take ‘community content’, which they get free from contributors, and then turn it into a firehose, which suddenly has a value in the ecommerce marketplace. This particular debate is likely to continue for some time.