Google has never proven adverse to laying down a few suitcases full of benjamins in exchange for hot new web properties to absorb. It paid $1 billion for YouTube back in 2006, after all, so it probably wouldn’t surprise you that the Big G also had its eye on acquiring micro-blogging platform Twitter earlier this year.
What might surprise you, though, is how much Google was willing to spend to own Twitter. According to Yahoo Financial News, earlier this year Google made an offer to take Twitter off its owners hands for a cool $2.5 billion.
Wow, right. But Twitter turned them down. In fact, Twitter apparently felt downright insulted by the offer, which prompted Google to make a second offer just three months ago… this time for four billion dollars.
You’re probably a bit shocked by that figure, but it actually makes a lot of sense: Twitter does something Google is incapable of doing, which is basically compile search indexes in real-time of the trends and subjects people are talking about. Since Twitter’s popularity no longer seems likely to fizzle out as a flash in the pan, that’s a lot of potential content that Google can slap AdWords onto in real-time.
Surprisingly, Twitter resisted this buy-out too, which implies they have some pretty grand plans of their own. I only wonder if Google will make another offer, and if this time, it’ll be an offer Twitter can’t refuse.
Google has never proven adverse to laying down a few suitcases full of benjamins in exchange for hot new web properties to absorb. It paid $1 billion for YouTube back in 2006, after all, so it probably wouldn’t surprise you that the Big G also had its eye on acquiring micro-blogging platform Twitter earlier this year.
What might surprise you, though, is how much Google was willing to spend to own Twitter. According to Yahoo Financial News, earlier this year Google made an offer to take Twitter off its owners hands for a cool $2.5 billion.
Wow, right. But Twitter turned them down. In fact, Twitter apparently felt downright insulted by the offer, which prompted Google to make a second offer just three months ago… this time for four billion dollars.
You’re probably a bit shocked by that figure, but it actually makes a lot of sense: Twitter does something Google is incapable of doing, which is basically compile search indexes in real-time of the trends and subjects people are talking about. Since Twitter’s popularity no longer seems likely to fizzle out as a flash in the pan, that’s a lot of potential content that Google can slap AdWords onto in real-time.
Surprisingly, Twitter resisted this buy-out too, which implies they have some pretty grand plans of their own. I only wonder if Google will make another offer, and if this time, it’ll be an offer Twitter can’t refuse.
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