Techcrunch annouced that Google is in talks to acquire Twitter. While usually these "early stage talks" don't end up into a deal, would this be good or bad news. Obviously it depends from which perspective:
Twitter as a company: very bad
There is really a strong case for Twitter being able to make it very
very very big: not only is Twitter the market leader in a new kind of
fast growing web usage but also Twitter has the potential to perform a
paradigm shift in terms of business model (more on this in another post
later). Wouldn't it be a pity not to pursue this
adventure. Under Google, Twitter will be just another service among others and will not have all management attention. This will hinder it's development vs. a standalone option (provided they have enough funding until it becomes profitable).
Twitter's founders: ???
It depends on what they want to achieve, on what is their objective: make big money now for sure or building maybe a major company in the web sector ?
Twitter's VC investors: very good
They'll make a hell of a lot of money with this sale... and in those days where VCs are craving for big exits (see Q1 09 numbers here) to show nice numbers to their LP's, it must be one of their only major exit opportunity.
I don't know if Twitter's VC can get a deal through without management approval but this could be (and I say "could be") a good example on how VCs may destroy a company's future due to misalignment of interests and timeframes.
Google: good
Even if the price tag is very high or even way above
Twitter "fair" valuation, they are basically killing a serious
prospective competitor in search and thus keeping their quasi
monopoly... this has unlimited value for them.
MSFT/Yahoo: bad
Twitter
could be a shot for those 2 to come back into the search fight they
lost. I wouldn't be surprised if they started an acquisition battle.
Facebook: neutral to good
With it's new design becoming more Twitter-like, Facebook is clearly trying to get onto Twitter. If they can't buy it and that Google hinders Twitter development, they should be happy with this deal
The web sector: very bad
Google again maintaining its predominance in the sector... and the less competition in a sector, the less performance/service/quality/innovation/etc. for all users...
Personnaly, I vote against that deal...for the web sector and for Twitter itself.
Those were my first thoughts. What are yours?
UPDATE: here is an answer by Twitter that doesn't say much except for one sentence "Our goal is to build a profitable, independent company and we're just getting started".
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