If Google were to buy Twitter, they wouldn't do it because they want Twitter's content or community, they'd do it to merge Twitter's single-digit display ad share with theirs and defensively eliminate a future competitor. I feel they have no more interest in Twitter than does Facebook.
Twitter acquired Crashlytics, and they released Fabric.io as a "Twitter Inside" SDK to entice app developers to Twitter integration and its MoPub ad network. This is their big push to beat out Facebook and live inside every app, but Google already plays this game, and Twitter isn't yet a huge threat to them. Either Google or Facebook could buy them defensively, but they need not at this time. (I feel that Microsoft's purchase of LinkedIn was also defensive, but that's a different story.)
Verizon, on the other hand, could buy Twitter. They bought AOL to enter the content creation market, and they could cement their share. Or more likely, they could instead buy Yahoo, and with it Tumblr, on the cheap.
Amazon could buy Twitter. They bought Twitch, and they could use Twitter to expand their social presence, logged-in time, and display ad share.
Yandex could buy Twitter. They would break into the US and Japanese market in a huge way. The Fabric.io SDK would be a perfect fit to drive more engagement from apps to their properties.
There were some rumors [1] recently that Google was considering to buy Twitter.
Now I don't know if there's anything to that, but in light of Facebook snatching up Instagram, (not to mention WhatsApp), Google moving in on Twitter seems like a fairly logical counter-move.
And just think of all the data!
My point is, this deal might be at Google's initiative, not Twitter's, and might represent the first step in that direction. It's just conjecture, of course..
One thing said in the article that I also agree with, is that it seems almost inevitable that Google will buy Twitter eventually. Seems like such a good fit.
I think that Google would very much like to acquire Twitter. They see their lack of success in the social area as a problem, and anyone - MS, Yahoo, facebook, etc. would love to own Twitter. The problem is as you note, Twitter doesn't seem at all interested in being acquired.
Twitter doesn't have the balance sheet for a leveraged buyout. No hard assets and money-losing.
Google or Facebook could buy Twitter for cash, but it's not clear it would be a good investment. It would be better to wait for Twitter to fail and then pick up the pieces at a huge discount.
I too was thinking this, does this mean a future acquisition is not out of the question? Frankly, I find a Google owned Twitter to be a terrifying prospect. Not that Jack is doing a great job there...but I'd much rather they be owned by multiple companies in a partnership than by one company. Twitter, imo, is far far more powerful than Facebook in driving world events given the leadership and journalists on the platform.
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