The obscurity began on April 3rd when Google Realtime Search went gloomy. The next day I learned the basic cause to be Google loosing access to its special Twitter data feed.

The source of the disagreement is indistinct, but the effects have been instant. Realtime Search disapeered - all of it, not just the part that relied on Twitter. This integrated Realtime results from Google News, Blog Search links, Facebook fan page updates and more.

For the past two years Google used Twitter not only to power Realtime results, but also for faster indexation of content and, I believe, to calculate Author power for use in their ranking algorithm. Google says they plan on reinstating Realtime with the power of Google+. But the network will have to grow considerably before this works.