Random Musings

I caught this news early on Thursday morning, on a tweet from Guy Kawasaki. That Techcrunch was reporting about late stage talks of Google acquiring Twitter. I checked to ensure that it was not an April 1 story, and that these were indeed “truemors”!

If this were to happen, I believe it would be a good move for all parties concerned.

Let’s understand first, who are the parties directly  involved:

1. Google

2. Twitter

3. We, the users of both!

Well, there is also Facebook which went after Twitter, failed to acquire it, then started aping Twitter. And then there is Microsoft, an investor in Twitter, still trying to catch up in the social space. And other such.

But really, the main three constituents of the deal are the ones enumerated above.

So why would it be good for all of them.

Google has been struggling to find the next wave of growth. Ad revenues have been down, many of the new projects it invested in, have not delivered. There is constant pressure, at least from media and analysts, that its losing its way. And that Twitter is a big threat on account of its ability to offer real time search results.

So it would be a good boost for Google at this time, to get Twitter.

Twitter on the other hand, has been under pressure to get revenue flow started. Its clean interface without clutter of ads, is appealing, but it haunts them now, as they cannot suddenly be seen to fill it up with ads. They did raise more funds recently, but I am sure the investors were also looking for some revenue side action from Twitter. A feeble attempt to put a small ad on home pages and talk of a pro-version coming out soon, were starts  on to the revenue path. But when you start from zero, its always a LONG way to go!!

So being acquired by Google would not be bad for them either.

What does Google bring to the table then?

A working advertising model, with advertiser and publisher relationships like no other, in Adsense / Adwords.

A model of revenue sharing which is well established and which can be put in place on Twitter in some or the other way, in no time.

A huge understanding of contextual advertising model, and some ability to filter our spam from the same.

All this can be unleased on to Twitter, to generate revenues for Twitter, very quickly.

While we all like it clean and free, we also know that there is nothing like a free lunch. So rather than wait for Twitter to run out of money or get desperate, or have its service quality suffer, this may be just the right antidote.

And where does that leave the last constituent of the puzzle? We, the users of Google and of Twitter?

I think it benefits us as well.

For one, we can be sure that our favorite microblogging service is here to stay.

And our favorite search engine is more empowered now.

And that for our search, we can go to a single place, and pick up real time as well as historical data.

And can get amazing trending information, for now, and for the past.

Yes, it would be good.

I would say, its a real WIN-WIN-WIN for the three parties involved.

Where does that put Facebook? I don’t know. Maybe there would be one more interface revision of Facebook, with a Google like search (maybe powered by MS Live) to go with the Twitter like updates that they have already incorporated??!