Google and Twitter have a cozy search and ad relationship with Google indexing tweets and Promoted Tweets in real-time.
What if the working partnership got cozier?
Google's inclusion of Twitter's Promoted Tweets into its
real-time search results represents more than just the first time Google is
including ads not fueled by AdWords on its properties.
It sets up the possibility that Google could acquire
Twitter at a later date, according to Paul Byrne, a senior account manager at
search engine optimization specialist Greenlight.
Promoted Tweets marks Twitter's first foray into online
advertising, letting advertisers such as Starbucks pay $100,000 to push their
products on Twitter. The ads are available on Twitter.com and through Twitter
partners, which is how they
landed on Google's Realtime search page.
That move is an upgrade from the previous arrangement,
where Google has been
paying Twitter to index its stream of tweets on its real-time search
engine.
Byrne, a former relationship manager at Google in the
U.K., said that though Twitter reportedly rebuffed acquisition offers from
Google, the Promoted Tweets arrangement proves there are ongoing discussions
between the two companies.
"With Google's stated goal of acquiring one new
company a month, Twitter would seem a nice fit if both sides could agree on a
price," Byrne wrote in a
blog post Dec. 13.
"Google has a huge war chest to fall back on. It has
a tendency to snap up leading sector companies when it can. We have seen this
with Double Click and YouTube in the past. So why not Twitter?"
He noted that such a deal would benefit both companies
and their advertisers. Tweets and Promoted Tweets could ultimately be seeded
across Google's search properties, including Google News, Google Finance, Google
Product Shopping, and Google Books. Twitter would undoubtedly reach more users
than it currently can.
The deal would give Google sturdier footing in the social
sector, where the search engine is weak. This is particularly necessary after
Microsoft Bing
embarked
on deep integrations with Facebook.
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