Twitter reportedly returning to Google search

Twitter may be heading back into Google search results, following a deal reportedly inked between the two companies to make tweets surface more easily online.

The 140-character bulletins, and often random thoughts of individuals, will show up on search results beginning first-half 2015, according to a Bloomberg report, which cited unnamed sources with knowledge of the deal. The agreement will give Google direct access to Twitter's firehose, so the former no longer needs to crawl the microblogging site to index the data stream from 284 million Twitter users. According to Twitter, some 500 million tweets are posted each day.

Engineers from both companies already are working to put the necessary pipes in place to turn on the search service. A similar agreement had run between 2009 and 2011, but former Twitter COO Ali Rowghani decided against a renewal to maintain more control over the site's content. Rowghani left the company last June amid slow user growth.

It did, however, renew a search deal with Microsoft's Bing in 2011 and also has a similar agreement with Yahoo.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has said numerous times that the company aims to have the world's largest audience and continuously looks to expand its global reach, which will bode well for its advertising goals.

Earlier this week, it began running "Promoted Tweet" ad units on social news reader app Flipboard. It will also be pushing ads on Yahoo Japan.

No advertising revenue will be exchanged in the Twitter-Google deal, Bloomberg reported, citing the unnamed sources and suggesting this meant the microblogging site will receive data-licensing revenue.

Twitter is slated to report its quarterly results later today.

CEO vow against Twitter trolls

In an internal e-mail he sent to staff, which was reported by The Verge, Costolo took "personal responsibility" for the company's inability to deal with harassment experienced by its users and vowed to take action to eradicate trolls.

"We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, and we've sucked at it for years," he wrote. "It's no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day. We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day."

"I'm frankly ashamed of how poorly we've dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO. It's absurd. There's no excuse for it. I take full responsibility for not being more aggressive on this front. It's nobody else's fault but mine, and it's embarrassing.

"We're going to start kicking these people off right and left and making sure that when they issue their ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them," he said.