Article by George Norman

On 03 Apr 2009

Popular social networking and micro-blogging site Twitter, the one that UK Government officials are saying it should be taught in schools (details here), is reportedly going to be acquired by Mountain View search engine giant Google. The information has been brought to light by TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington who cites two sources who say negotiations are going on – just that they can’t agree whether they are early or late negotiations. The information has been picked up by several media outlets. I thought it fitting to report the news as well so that our readers who use Twitter be kept up-to-date (even if it is just a rumor at the current moment in time).

“Here’s a heck of a rumor that we’ve sourced from two separate people close to the negotiations: Google is in late stage negotiations to acquire Twitter. We don’t know the price but can assume its well, well north of the $250 million valuation that they saw in their recent funding. If this is accurate, it’s a brilliant deal for Google - the value of Twitter is only going to go up over time. And it will be Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone’s second sale to Google - they sold Blogger to them just five years ago,” says Michael Arrington.


The first report presented by Michael Arrington said that a source indicates the negotiations are at a late stage. Then the article was updated with another source claiming the aforementioned negotiations are actually at an early stage. This does not bode well for the rumor’s authenticity, but one thing is for sure (maybe): the two companies are talking purchases.

It must be said that a few months ago Twitter refused a purchase proposal originating from Facebook. At the time Facebook offered to buy Twitter for a total of $500 million, made up of Facebook stock – which at the time was at an all-time high. If Google will purchase Twitter, it will pay cash or publicly valued stock (which is not that much different from cash).

The one person that is hoping this rumor is false is Twitter’s Creative Director Douglas Bowman. Why? Simply because he used to be a Google employee who left the company a few weeks ago; upon leaving the Mountain View-based company he said goodbye to Google in a lengthy blog post (read here) in which he said that he’ll miss plenty of things, but not “a design philosophy that lives or dies strictly by the sword of data.” Now that he is employed by Twitter, I don’t think he sees this Google purchase as a good thing.



Tags: Google, Twitter

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