Google has announced that they have snapped up twitter competitor Jaiku today. It is a good move by google as they can integrate the microblogging technology into many of their existing services. Why not twitter some may ask. It has been long known that Jaiku's technology and features are better than twitter. There hasn't been mass exodus from twitter to Jaiku because people built up their friends on twitter and had their social network there. It was too much of a pain to ask all your friends to move to yet another service.

Google doesn't need the users, they have hundreds of millions of them using search and their existing applications. It is likely that that they wanted the more advanced technology to integrate it. Smart move.

What does that mean for twitter? It could be good and it could mean real competition is on the way. On one side of the coin, people like twitter because it is standalone and the vast amount of ways that there is to connect with twitter (API and 3rd party offerings). In that respect, there isn't really any strong competition anymore. On the other hand, if google integrates well then millions and millions will get twitterlike functionality with Orkut, gmail, office apps, google phone (if it is in fact on the way) and all of the other google apps. Lets see how well google integrates Jaiku with their existing offerings.

Here is a copy of the note on google's blog:

"Technology has made staying in touch with your friends and family both easier and harder: living a fast-paced, on-the-go lifestyle is easier (and a lot of fun), but it's more difficult to keep track of everyone when they're running around at warp speed. That's why we're excited to announce that we've acquired Jaiku, a company that's been hard at work developing useful and innovative applications for staying in touch with the people you care about most -- regardless of whether you're at a computer or on a mobile phone.

We wish a hearty Google welcome to Jaiku, and are looking forward to working together on new and innovative ways of keeping people connected."

The original Jaiku - google blog release can be found here .

Update:  Here is the note that is on the Jaiku home page

"Wonderful Jaiku users,

Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen, Jaiku Founders"

"Tweet your Google Calendar " is the tagline that Twittercal has at the top of their website. As the range of Twitter applications grows it seems logical that more and more productivity ideas and ways to use Twitter in this regard will come to light.

Twittercal is a twitter bot that allows you to send a special coded message via twitter, through any twitter channel (web, sms, mobile, twitter client etc.) that will update your calendar at Google.

While it is a good idea in theory, I would have thought that most business people have a blackberry or other smartphone that does calendar already. Then again, maybe this isn't only for business people!!

A free service that connects your Twitter account to your Google Calendar. Add events in a snap from your favorite Twitter client.

Adds a 'Share with Twitter' button to the bottom of Google Reader.

From Lifehacker.com :

"Firefox with Greasemonkey: Greasemonkey userscript Google Reader + Twitter allows for two-click sharing of GReader articles with Twitter. Google Reader + Twitter adds a "Share with Twitter" button to the Google Reader footer that displays a popup where you can customize the title, tag, URL, and note before submitting the article to Twitter. "

See article here..