No specific announcement was made by either of the two companies, but the news aroused enormous interest. Stories and counter stories abound on the matter with technology news blogs clashing over the veracity of their respective content.
Whatever be the reality, the proposed alliance or takeover of San Francisco start-up Twitter by Google makes commercial sense. By such a takeover, the Mountain View, California based Google would ensure that Twitter does not emerge as a standalone rival. It also eliminates the chances of Twitter being taken over by a rival like Microsoft.
Analyst Greg Sterling from Sterling Market Intelligence said of Twitter’s attractiveness, “Twitter is clearly hot. The phenomenon of real time search and the ability to capture this stream of 'tweet' discussions is an important development in social media and search because people are trying to mine data for information that might otherwise be sought in a search engine. This whole phenomenon Twitter represents is here to stay and needs to be addressed by search engines."
Given this fact, there has to be a grain of truth in the Google, Twitter story, and it cannot just be put on the backburner as a rumor. The traditions and aspirations of both the companies match and they have a business history as well.
The Twitter founders sold Blogger to Google. Analysts feel that time is now ripe for Twitter to sell itself as it is witnessing the peak of its popularity now. An alliance whereby Google establishes an AdSense partnership with Twitter could also make commercial sense.
Twitter's co-founder Biz Stone, while making the company’s intentions clear, said, "It should come as no surprise that Twitter engages in discussions with other companies regularly and on a variety of subjects. Our goal is to build a profitable, independent company and we're just getting started."
Here’s another school of thought. Referring to Google’s acquisition of YouTube, which was highly popular but did not have a solid revenue model, Allen Weiner, a Gartner analyst opined, "Does Google really want to spend another huge amount of money on another extremely popular service that hasn't figured out a way to make money? I don't see it happening."
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