How Would You Feel About Google Buying Twitter?
The topic of the night here in the US is a rumored deal in the works between Google and Twitter. Michael Arrington reported tonight that acquisition talks are in late stages, then revised his report with another source close to at least one company saying that the talks were in early stages.
Whatever stage these talks are in - some big issues are raised by the possibility of such a deal happening. We'll be posting a ReadWriteWeb staff round table discussion on the topic in 7 or 8 hours, but we thought we'd ask our European readers, who are just starting a new day, for their thoughts in the meantime. We'd love to wake up to some fresh thinking on the topic.
RSS readers can click here to participate and see the results of the poll on this page. Some perspectives we've begun to consider so far are:
"Since adding the Twitter On Google Greasemonkey script, I click on Twitter links far more often than Google links. People are searching for what happened on American Idol last night, for what Obama just said, for that crazy video people are talking about. Those are all real-time searches that Twitter is well suited to serve. Calling Twitter a Google killer is not accurate but it is a new kind of search. But Google owns so much already! Couldn't they just let me have this one thing that they didn't own?"
-Sarah Perez, ReadWriteWeb
"It makes no sense to me. They have the smartest engineers in the world and could reproduce Twitter no problem. They could have integrated Jaiku into Android, Gmail and general presence info if they gave a crap about real time search."
-Lidija Davis, ReadWriteWeb
"It's a pure platform play. Google understands platforms and Twitter is a powerful platform. The network effects are already there and they'd be buying while there's momentum."
-John Musser, founder of API and Mashup directory and blog ProgrammableWeb
"I bet that Google won't buy Twitter but instead will find a way to make an Adsense deal with them...Google doesn't need Twitter for real-time search. They can set up a crawler for the RSS feed today for next to nothing."
-Steve Rubel, Edelman Digital
My perspective (Marshall Kirkpatrick) is that this would be at least as big a tragedy as when Yahoo! bought and suffocated Delicious; I don't know why Evan Williams would be willing to sell to Google.
What do you think? Could this be good? Will it be bad? How do you feel about it and what do you think it might mean?
You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Rick Turoczy, Sean Ammirati, Lidija Davis and Phil Glockner.
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Yes, it make senses for Google to Buy Twitter
1)to prevent other Bigs (MS, Yoo, FB, .. to buy Twitter.
2)Evan Williams & partner already sold before their Blogger to Google
3)Google is no more a search engine but an Advetising one
4)Twitter is an "easysimple" service with great momentum => you can replicate technology but not the audience.
5)better buy now, than to have to do it ... later
This is a great news, Google is very powerfull company and twitter is great tools ;)
I think Google certainly shouldn't buy Twitter. Whereas the plan to acquire YouTube was a very good one, because everyone saw the potential and knew that video and video advertising was (and still is) the next big thing to come, the idea of spending millions of dollars in times of a financial crisis (btw they just fired hundreds of employees) on a powerful platform without any kind of businessplan is just silly.
I agree with Steve Rubel. They should be selling an AdSense deal, at least because there's less risk.
Nowadays everyone is going to Twitter (companys, bloggers, ...), but truly everyone is asking whether it's useful or how they'll ever monetize the service.
Hands off, Google!
Google have the expertise to replicate Twitter's platform but they are not good at community building. If they buy Twitter (and I'm sceptical) they would be buying the community.
I don't think that Google would ruin Twitter, as they did with Jaiku, the backlash would be enormous and they'd ruin their investment.
I would love someone with the tech and financial resources required to give Twitter some robustness. Hopefully goodbye fail whale, although the FeedBurner borkage doesn't make me too confident about that.
If Google does buy them (and I have been saying they might, and still believe a deal could be made), it would be to be seen to own the leader, all the loyal and addicted members, and be an admission their past efforts were below par :)
I live in France, i'm 25 years old, i'm a Web fanatic but i don't care about Twitter. I found it quite useless, and people around me don't use this. They spend their time on Facebook or other social networks and services, but nobody deal with Twitter.
So when i see 10 blog posts in my Google reader telling me that Google is going to buy Twitter for average 500 M$ (same story with Facebook) i'm quite astonished. I wouldn't pay a penny for it.
That's a french point of view. I don't know what is the feeling about Twitter for my european colleagues, but it seems to be an american phenomena.
I think this makes a lot of sense for both sides, Twitter needs to grow fast and Google needs to 'get' social networking.
Google knows how to scale sites and has lots of people ready to work on this kind of thing. Google already has an infrastructure around adsense which would apply to twitter search very well.
Google would have to realise that this time they can't take twitter offline like they have with other properties and would probably have to keep the branding like they did with youTube.
The increased budget and influence that Google has could bring back SMS in countries that don't have it and increase the API request rate (up from 100/hour).
Twitter would also integrate well with gmail since that is a communications tool. It would work well on Android as the next generation of text messages.
Shareholder value for shareholders of Google?
Another money losing service without business.
They bought Jaiku, which in many ways was better, and didn't know what to do with that.
They have recently released the code as JaikuEngine closely linked to Google's machines.
So what benefit Twitter? None.
For me it's not a question of ethics, but rather of service itself. I receive 400 news articles on Google Reader a day, it's sharing and staring capabilities have made a very good base for research for any of my personal and public projects. I now am switching to Twitter for mainstream media, that otherwise SPAM my Google Reader, such as The Guardian, TIME, etc.
My point is thus, transparency between these services would only benefit both parts. Twitter makes no money(yet), has a good sound history of mishaps, with it's harsh start-up as an ever-crashing service. Google could solve those problems. Twitter would benefit Google Search and be a great addition to their Apps collection :)
This is very interesting.. Keep us posted RWW.
I like Steve's view, and I also think Twitter could become someting big when it comes to searching the present, the real time web (as opposed to searching the past, the Google way), so I really think it would make sense.
But as a European... Well, what can I say... once more, things are happening elsewhere... nothing new here ;)
In France, to be more specific, with the Hadopi law, we're entering the dark ages of the internet, so this Twitter/Google deal is kind of far away from our minds right now.
I am sure its all been seen (with subtitles too for the french)
Does goog need twit
Twouble with Twitter
we all need goog so why wouldnt twit
Google would get a thumbs down from me. Williams might have sold to google once but I can't see him doing it again.
I think they should turn down a sale flat and let the real growth start.
Lets not forget everyone is seeing twitter as this platform to share a 140 character message but really whats to stop them branching out to other areas once they have finished with 140 chars.
Very mixed indeed!
On the one hand, something inside me recoils at the idea of gTweet (tm). Twitter's so great because of what they've made it, because of the community that's there and their transparency. I just can't imagine it being the same with a regime change.
However, Gmail, docs, calendar etc... are all so great, I could imagine tweets etc being a very useful augmentation.
If I were being greedy, I'd want twitter and Google to talk about a partnership to share the community (twitter) and the expertise to keep it up (Google) without one buying the other. It could be a project, joined by thousands of others too, without the need to bring it all into a single, focuesd boardroom. That way, we could all decide which bits work for us.
First proposal: Keep the Fail Whale! (I just don't want to see it too often ;) )
Posted by: https://creativecommons.net/zach/
| April 3, 2009 3:59 AM
I think that google will not make the same error twice, they made it before acquiring Jaiku. I made some note about the subject in my blog.
this is good deal
what Google's buying is not (never) Twitter technology. Twitter brand and users (community) are more valuable at the moment and still growing potential. This also can be viewed as act of saving and growing more potential of Twitter by Google.
Twitter which currently has no business model, perhaps always in critical situation in order to maintain its service availability especially when users growth is too fast (business model and scalability issue). Google as we know is the best in handling internet platform and infrastructures.
For Google, this also anticipate the next Facebook (and others) moves on "what's on your mind", when Facebook launch its search or trend of hundred millions users posts in its walled garden.
That's what I think and I'm Asian.
Here is a poll i published earlier with about 40 votes. Google likely to buy Twitter? results here http://twtpoll.com/8d7zhp
Why do anyone want Google to buy yet another "competitor". The are world dominante in so many online services already. Personally I've started looking for alternatives to Google in as many online applications as possible.
Initial response: Fuck yeah.
From a purely egotistical point of view: Better Google than Facebook acquiring Twitter. Much better.
From an altruistic, good-for-society point of view: One company controlling most of the popular social media might become a problem in the future, but not with Google's current management IMO. Besides, better Google than Facebook. Or MS.
I'm Norwegian.
I think this makes good sense, at least for Google. Twitter cannot easily advertise to their users - but they know a HUGE amount about those users. Probably almost every Twitter user is also a Google user. Put the two together (cookies), and Google can do much better ads when Twitter users visit. That's how you monetize Twitter - at least it's one easy short-term way.
I mentioned this last June, here
http://www.fluidinfo.com/terry/2008/06/09/random-thoughts-on-twitter/
Terry
Posted by: terrycojones.myopenid.com
| April 3, 2009 5:19 AM
Bad, bad, bad...and always remember, google is a public company, you can't say "oh it's ok, they have a good management team, they wont use their information to control us"... people come and go, information will always be on their servers...not good, too much power (and I am not talking about this twitter thing, but this strategy of getting everything that works and its not own by us)
Yak
These guys are too lucky. After selling blogger to google some time ago, they are selling twitter too? How good must someone be to have 2 huge web ideas a few year apart?
yeah, I wouldn't mind if Google bought Twitter. In fact, it would be better than pretty much anyone else buying it (and someone has to).
Well I understand all those privacy/antimonopolist/etc issues but I would be glad if Google buys Twitter because this would bring Google a little bit closer to being The Ultimate Everything it is supposed to be and I still hope to see something like this during my lifetime :)
As sad as this may seem - "Money talks, bullsh*t walks!" If Google ponies up enough cash money, Twitter will take it. Will this happen? Only Google and Twitter knows how much is enough to walk away and let Google have it all.
It would be a blockbuster deal if it happened.
In my opinion, Twitter is the first real threat to Google core business: search !
Clearly Twitter isn't a Google killer (I mean like Google used to be for Yahoo!) BUT it is the first service that made me switch from Google for SOME queries (about currently happening events). Then if Google wants to maintain its monopoly on search in Europe, buy Twitter is a great idea.
And by the way, I agree with Holten, better Google than Facebook.
What are Microsoft and Yahoo! doing ? And eBay (think about it, follow your auctions on twitter ...)
I'm French.
No, I don't think an acquisition by Google would be a good thing for twitter (and the community). I think Google is just a big, slow media company these days, they don't have the momentum anymore to get twitter to the next level.
A cooperation between the two could be possible; enrich google with 'live search results' and improve twitter's own search with Google's expertise. Maybe they could do a deal on advertising. But I strongly believe that twitter should be an independant company for as long as possible (and that should be pretty long with the funding they have).
Is it good or bad? It depends from which perspective.
- For Google it's great
- For Twitter as a company it would be mistake
- For Twitter's VC it's great news
- For Twitter's founders, it depends on what they want to achieve
- etc.
I've detailed my thoughts here: http://tinyurl.com/dhcz7u
I think Google certainly will try and buy Twitter.
Although Google could replicate the software / technology in no time at all and at little cost (relative to the $500m Facebook offered Twitter) the point is that Twitter is now a phenomena (a brand phenomena as well as a cultural / business phenomena). Why is it a brand phenomena? No doubt, many people (in particular, from both from the technology and marketing industries are asking / trying to work out - don't forget there are other real-time services out there that most people haven't even heard of).
Twitter is just zooming up and up. It's got massive momentum. It's already got a large amount of followers (and don't forget that it takes a while to build up followers - relevant followers - on Twitter, so people aren't suddenly going to abandon ship: and the return from Twitter is already big: 1)new customers/clients, 2)more traffic to website, 3) generating business ideas 4) business contacts 5)use for news updates - both general and industry-specific 6)people have found jobs on Twitter - and much more.
These are all useful to Google. But the real interest for Google in Twitter I think (which some of the above points are part of) is the way Twitter functions as a human search engine (as opposed to, of course, just a computer search engine). Combine these two together and you have got the ultimate search engine.
Sure it's a risk buying Twitter (I think the biggest risk is that another Twitter could emerge out of no-where. Google - i think - has to judge that Twitter has enough followers / momentum / brand awareness etc .. not to be significantly threatened in the long-term by a potential competitor - but if Google leaves it too late, then the price to buy Twitter could be huge, and/or Twitter could consider going it alone). But I think the the pros outweigh the cons well. Google has $14bn (I think I recall from somewhere this was the amount they had to spare?) cash to spare (to spend) at the moment. And can't see the current owners of Twitter giving away their company without trying to get a decent bite into that £14bn ..
I think Google buying Twitter is bad for Consumers as it will slow the pace of innovation at Twitter while the exec team focuses on the merger, not the code.
For advertisers, this is probably neutral. Adding Twitter to the Google network gives advertisers more reach with one network (google), but might lead to higher prices as Google gains control.
For publishers, this is bad all around. With more control over where people go on the web Google can supplant free results with paid.
I will tell you from East European perspective. It is realy bad when someone become to much powerfull.
There was small hope that Twitter could become one more pole.