[erikb]

Why would anybody think that Google would buy Twitter, if they think that Google is number one in the same space that Twitter is number two at? If you are number one in something, usually you don't buy number two.

If you want to grab part of a market you are pretty much not part of or modernize your century old empire you will consider buying number two.

No 2 is already quite expensive. And if you are already the market leader grabbing more does not yield a value that corresponds with the price. And in the end making some return on your investment is always quite a big factor.

[themartorana]

These buys aren't straight revenue buys. For Google, it would be buying an enormous database of personal information, and only Google could tell you if that would be valuable to them or not.

[jasode]

>For Google, it would be buying an enormous database of personal information,

For armchair quarterbacks like us, it's hard for us to mindread Larry Page's ultimate plans. That said, Chris Sacca has an interesting theory on why Larry wouldn't be that interested in Twitter.[1] Chris isn't just a random talking head. He worked at Google to buy datacenters for Larry Page during its explosve growth stage and is also one of Twitter's biggest outside shareholders. He's now a billionaire angel investor.

His comments are from 2012 but I believe it's still relevant 4 years later. The tl;dw: Twitter isn't an interesting "science problem" for Google to solve.

I haven't studied the list of Google's acquisitions extensively but it doesn't seem like they have a pattern of acquiring companies for the databases of user accounts.

[1] relevant excerpt is 4m45ss - 10m51s : https://youtu.be/SK4ezQrTqFw?t=4m45s

[2] https://www.cbinsights.com/research-google-acquisitions

[erikb]

Agreed. Having other reasons Google may buy Twitter. But not because they are number one at something at which Twitter is number two.

[niftich]

I don't understand why Google keeps getting brought up as a possible purchaser of Twitter. I just don't see it as either a synergistic or a defensive purchase.

- Google already has two-and-a-half social networks (Youtube, Google+, Blogger) if you don't count their ever-relaunching chat apps (Hangouts, Allo, Duo)

- they don't need Twitter to innovate, they don't need them to stay relevant, and they don't need Twitter's presence on phones because they (Google) are likely also present on mobile devices

- they are still the leader in display ads, Twitter is distant third behind Facebook [1], and Facebook has absorbed most of the growth in the last year, but now that AOL and Yahoo have merged (both now owned by Verizon), it's possible that Twitter is fourth behind them (I'll try to confirm with sources)

On a defensive purchase:

- Facebook, Amazon (Twitch), Microsoft, and Verizon are Google's largest threats in the social/ads/attention space; Google dwarfs them all except Facebook. As I've said above, Verizon is the up-and-coming ad network and they stand the most to gain by (approximately) doubling their share, but even if they do so they still won't be a meaningful threat to Google in the near future.

- Snapchat, despite being a serious threat to Facebook (mostly to their subsidiary Instagram), isn't actually a threat to Google -- it infringes on next to no capability that one could enjoyable do with Google's services. This remains unchanged even with Google's new phone-number-bootstrapped chat and video apps, Allo and Duo, which exist primarily to compete with iMessage/Facetime and WhatsApp

- Someone with the most to gain from buying Twitter would be a relative outsider who wants to enter the social space, or get access to influencers and their valuable ad draws. In my opinion, these are Verizon, Amazon, and Yandex. I've posted about this before, here [2][3].

[1] (2015) http://www.dmnews.com/digital-marketing/facebook-twitter-to-...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12083561#12083975

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11913828#11914620

[type0]

> Someone with the most to gain from buying Twitter would be a relative outsider who wants to enter the social space, or get access to influencers and their valuable ad draws. In my opinion, these are Verizon, Amazon, and Yandex.

I think you are spot on on this Verizon, Amazon, Newscorp or even Sony, but why would Yandex buy it?

[niftich]

My speculation is that Yandex wishes to gain a foothold in the US/Europe/ANZ market for display ads; they already command a significant share in cyrillic countries and Turkey; Turkey is incidentally a large Twitter market.

The primary cyrillic social network is vKontakte whose popularity in those regions is to the detriment of Facebook. Meanwhile Google is a serious threat to Yandex' search share (and therefore, ad money), so expanding beyond their home base would be a good hedge against Google.

If you look at Yandex's portfolio of services you'll notice they're missing a general-purpose social network, and their coverage looks similar to that of Yahoo, with elements of content production (like Verizon/AOL/Yahoo) sprinkled in. But unlike Yahoo which was cash-strapped and couldn't figure out how to monetize Tumblr, Yandex has cash on hand and Twitter would be an expensive, but very strategic purchase.