There are a lot of people tweeting on speculation that Internet search giant Google might add Twitter to its lengthy list of acquisitions, and Twitter has finally responded. While Twitter cofounder Biz Stone wouldn’t say much Friday about the rumors, he did say the rumors shouldn’t be surprising.
“It should come as no surprise that Twitter engages in discussions with other companies regularly and on a variety of subjects,” Stone said. “Our goal is to build a profitable, independent company, and we’re just getting started.
“A Twitter-Google merger has been speculated on for quite some time, along with Twitter/Microsoft and Twitter/Yahoo mergers as well,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of strategy and analysis at Interpret. “At the moment, it’s all still rumor and even the source of the original rumor has toned down the likelihood quite a bit.”
Google hasn’t been shy about acquiring both small and larger businesses since its start in 2001 and has acquired 53 companies, including DodgeBall, Zingku and Jaiku, all for Google Mobile services.
DodgeBall, a SMS social-networking service, was acquired by Google in 2005. It was not too long after Google acquired the company that its founder, Dennis Crowley, and founding employee Alex Rainert left Google.
The duo blogged about their disappointment with Google and its lack of support for DodgeBall. In his posting announcing his departure, Crowley said he was frustrated by his experience at Google because he couldn’t convince Google that DodgeBall was worth the engineering resources.
Crowley added that it was even more frustrating watching other startups innovate in the mobile and social space.
Not long after that, Jaiku and Zingku were acquired by Google. Both companies have services similar to Twitter.
Zingku, acquired by Google in September 2007, was aimed at people in their 20s and allowed users to send standard text and…