On Monday, Google announced that its Google Friend Connect product, which plugs social-networking features into participating sites, is now compatible with Twitter. Twitter is the first third party service after Plaxo to actually integrate with Google's new service.

By doing so, Google is now able to offer active Twitter members access to their friends. This will help Google compete against Facebook Connect, which was already able to provide this type of access to anyone with an active Facebook account. It’s clear that Google is locked in a battle with Facebook Connect, and thanks to this Twitter integration, Friend Connect now feels a bit more like Facebook Connect, as your actual friends are shown separately from the other members of the site.

"This means that when you join a friend connected site, you can choose to use your Twitter profile, discover people you follow on Twitter who are also members of the site, and quickly tweet that you have found a cool website," explains Google Friend Connect Product Manager Mussie Shore.

Back in May Twitter was seen as a relying party in the Google/MySpace/Facebook war, and they hastily chose MySpace as their partner of choice. That partnership was never integrated, and MySpace won't comment on it.

Moreover earlier this fall, Facebook offered to buy Twitter for $100 million in cash. But Twitter said no. By choosing Google, Twitter executives are underlining the fact that they view Twitter not as a simple tool on the periphery of their members' Internet usage, but as the place where users consider themselves best represented on the Internet.