JAKARTA – Google is reportedly in talks with Facebook and ByteDance to include TikTok and Instagram videos in search results. Both Instagram and TikTok have become huge social platforms over the past few years with millions of users worldwide.
Instagram has now grown into the social media giant of a relatively small photo-sharing site following its $1 billion acquisition by Facebook in 2012. Meanwhile TikTok has exploded into the world's leading short video platform despite the controversy over Chinese ownership and threats of bans by within the government. President Donald Trump.
TikTok's video format has proven to be so successful that most social apps have been forced to launch similar products to stay relevant among the same demographic. While Instagram Reels has proven to be quite popular with users, YouTube Shorts still has a long way to go to catch up with its competitors.
Due to TikTok's soaring popularity, a recent study found that people in the US and UK spend more time on TikTok than on YouTube. However, YouTube is still the leader in total time spent and has more users overall.
Google Search already includes YouTube videos, but TikTok and Instagram clips stand out for their absence. According to a report by The Information, the company is now trying to change that by including results from these two influential apps on its search page.
Ahead of that, Google is said to be holding talks with Facebook and ByteDance, Instagram and TikTok's parent companies, respectively. Google has confirmed the report, saying it is holding "standard discussions" as it seeks new ways to organize information on its search pages. Discussions are said to be in their early stages as of now, and there's no word on whether the company will be able to discuss a deal going forward.
For the deal to work as planned, TikTok and Instagram must provide Google with the data search engines need to index and classify the catalogs of the two services.
According to the report, the positive outcome of the talks will not only allow both apps to reach a wider audience, but also help Google maintain the relevance of its search engine in an era where people are increasingly turning to video-based apps instead of web searches for their information.
However, it appears neither Facebook nor ByteDance will be willing to share their data with Google, meaning the agreement may never be reached and their videos may continue to be absent from Google Search results.
If the deal actually happens, it will be interesting to see what future search results will look like on Google with links from Instagram and TikTok jockeying for attention, along with YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, and other video-sharing sites.
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