DealHorizon - the faster, easier way to create and share business plans

Three decades ago, while on holiday in Sri Lanka (still the best place I have ever visited), I was told a story that has stayed with me since, and that I am reminded of, watching Google's current dance with Twitter.

In this story, which I will abbreviate here, the rise of the popularity of Buddhism in India started to cause concern to religious leaders in that country. The country's dominant religion, Hinduism, which pre-dated Buddhism by centuries (some would claim millenia) was under threat. What was to be done?

According to my Sri Lankan guide, what the religious leaders in India decided, is that there was no need for devotees to the Buddha to convert away from Hinduism - because the Buddha was in fact merely yet another avatar of Vishnu (the twenty-fourth avatar of Vishnu, or the ninth of the ten main avatars overall, depending on your leaning).

The bottom line: It was possible for a Hindu to be both a follower of Buddha, and a Hindu. Problem solved - Buddhism peaked, and then began a slow decline in India and never recovered. Hinduism remains dominant.

I'm reminded of this story watching Google wrap its tentacles around Twitter's real-time output. As Google's real-time search capabilities grow, it will mean that I don't need to go to Twitter anymore to view my updates. I will be able to see exactly what was just published, simply by staying with my default home page: Google.

What are the ramifications of this? It comes down to which interface you prefer. As much as I love Twitter, Twitter isn't going to become my main interface. Nor is Wikipedia, or TechCrunch, or CNN. Google, which now provides access to both real-time and historical data, may not only be winning a battle here, but a war.

More evidence of this is the fact that Twitter currently feeds more folks into this site than Google Search. That is now going to change back in favor of Google with real-time search coming online.

I've no doubt that someone inside Google has a plan to add "Twitter-like" tag functionality to Google Alerts, so it becomes possible to link a source on the web ("DealHorizon.com") with a search term ("venture capital") a la Twitter. Note to Google: The addition of that single text field could change everything - and make Google Alerts a key player in real-time search.

What can Twitter do to prevent themselves becoming merely an "avatar" of Google? How can they stop the inevitable peak and decline to the status of back-end data-center feeding real-time data to Google's real-time search engine? Can they somehow flip positions with Google and reverse the wrestling hold Google is putting in place?

I'm not privvy to the whiteboard discussions that I'm sure are going on at Twitter HQ, but I'd sure love to know what they're planning - because right now, I feel like I'm watching a replay of a two-thousand year old story.