By Walter Elly

You may have heard the rumors about Google being in talks with Twitter to buy them. This is not the first time that a sale of Twitter has been discussed. Facebook was apparently after them late last year. But why would Google want to buy Twitter?

To answer that, we simply need to look to 2003, when Twitter CEO Evan Williams sold Blogger to Google. In many ways Blogger and Twitter are similar. Typing to you from within the Blogger content creation interface (Blogger powers our blog) we recall the early days of blogging. Back then, like Twitter, some derided blogging as a fad – and we all know how blogging turned out Of course unlike Twitter, blogging exists without Blogger. Though it’s worth noting that there are other Twitter like products (Jaiku for example, was purchased by Google in 2007). But, like Blogger, Twitter enables both content creation and search within that content.

That’s where Google comes in– revenue from search advertising is the name of the game (accounting for 40% of Google’s revenue). With Twitter search quickly becoming as important as blog search, and some say even a threat to Google, it’s easy to see that Google wants to insure that when you execute a Twitter search that you do it through them. Not only that, but owning Twitter would enable Google to add Twitter content to their main search results pages in ways they can’t now, ways that would be exclusive to Twitter otherwise. Google’s history with Blogger is a guide of what might come- they integrated Blogger created content in near real-time within their search results and used the body of Blogger content to help tune their search results to be even more relevant then they are now. In the end, a Twitter purchase would circumvent the issue of Twitter becoming a destination for search instead of Google. Coincidence that rumors of talks sparked up the day after Twitter rolled out a new UI that placed search prominently on the user screen? Perhaps not!

Food for thought: Google had the foresight to buy YouTube, which now fights it out with Yahoo to be the number 2 search destination. A Twitter purchase would be made for the same reasons, but will it happen? At MicroArts we’re leveraging Twitter as part of our brand’s marketing strategies. A Google purchase could extend and strengthen the value of Twitter to our brands. We’re excited to see how things will play out, stay tuned!