Fama Nihil Est Celerius (Nothing is Faster Than Rumor)

Google launched real-time search today.  It’s the latest update in what people are calling the “Now Web”– a term that was coined, if I’m not mistaken, by ReputationDefender (and Twitter) investor Mike Maples.  Real-time search has been something of a darling in the Valley over the past few months.  Check out this piece from Venturebeat from the summer.

Real-time search is a new and exciting presentation of data on the web.  The data isn’t different. It’s just streamed faster a la the Facebook or Twitter update.

The good news is that people might be able to track world news more swiftly.  Every femtosecond seems to count these days.  Of course, rumor will also spread faster.

This will no doubt also spawn a new practice and industry of dominating real-time search. Particularly since Google appears to be putting its search results at the top of its search page, there is strong incentive to bombard the web with the latest and greatest inputs from lots of sources, so that people click on your (read “the very latest–last minute–no, wait, less second–no, even more recent!) content.