Rumors of the search engine giant Google, buying-out micro blogging website, Twitter resurface time and again. Apparently the unexpected rise by 4% of Twitter stock price was triggered by one such new rumor. Further, there were claims by media reports that Twitter had gone as far as to hire Goldman Sachs to defend it against takeover. One such threat was from Google Inc, claims one media report.
Google buying Twitter?
However, there has been no confirmation of such events by either Goldman Sachs or by Twitter. The present rumors are very similar to aborted attempts by Microsoft to buy Yahoo.
Back in 2008, Microsoft had attempted to buy Yahoo, ahead of threats of Google’s search engine dominance. Microsoft’s Bing had failed and the software giant was on the lookout for a search engine which had the second largest market. Yahoo appeared to be the most lucrative to Microsoft. However, despite hard negotiations, no deal could be concluded. Then, with the economic collapse Yahoo’s value dropped by nearly half.
For Google the situation is much the same as Microsoft experienced back in 2008. Google presently faces threat from the growing popularity of social networking site, Facebook. The enormous pace at which Facebook is morphing as the single most important entity on the internet, Google could well be dislodged from being the primer ad revenue aggregator online. Facebook’s new found video ads roll-out and other revenue optimizing features are expected to far outpace Google Inc’s own ventures.
At another level, Google attempts to building a specific social networking product have failed not once, but twice. It’s earlier networking feature Buzz and now Google + too appears not to be making much progress. Logically, Google will have to find the second best social networking site to augment Google’s reach.
All pointers indicate Google could do well to take over Twitter, as the micro-blogging site continues to lose revenue, and shares lose value.
