Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about Twitter being up for sale. Well it’s more been about who’s interested in buying the company rather them actually being up for sale. There’s been quite a few big names in the press, that are interested in picking up the social media company. Those include Microsoft, SalesForce, Walt Disney, Google, and even Verizon. Now it’s surfacing that Google has actually hired a financial advisor to take a look at bidding for Twitter, and whether it’s worth it for the search engine.
According to a report out of Bloomberg, the search giant has hired Lazard Ltd., to review the bid they may make for Twitter. This doesn’t mean that Google is indeed looking to purchase the social media platform, but that they are interested and evaluating whether it would be a good idea to purchase it. This all comes from a person familiar with the situation, so it could be true, it could also be untrue.
Twitter is getting attention from many big companies due to one big reason. And that’s the data that Twitter has. Google collects a ton of data on everyone that uses their services. This is how they are able to provide amazing services at very little cost, as well as making their ads better. Let’s not forget that Google is an ad company, and over 95% of their revenue comes from search and ads. Twitter would be a great platform to help out their core business. But it would be interesting to see what would happen with Google+, if they do pick up Twitter.
When it comes to Microsoft, they actually are only in the bidding process to keep Twitter out of SalesForce’s hands. Verizon is a bit of an interesting one, considering they just bought up AOL recently, and are in the process of closing out a deal for Yahoo. While Google would want Twitter for the data, Verizon undoubtedly would too, but also their ads. As they have been strengthening their ad portfolio with Yahoo and AOL’s ad business, which helps them make money off of their Go90 service.
There’s no word on a deal just yet for Twitter, but insiders have said previously that they expect a deal to be announced before the end of the year.