Blodget: 5 Reasons Google Should Buy Twitter for $1 Billion

From Henry Blodget - If Google were to acquire Twitter, Google should buy the company for $1 Billion
1. Google needs a huge new growth engine and Twitter might just fit the bill.
2. Twitter is a hell of a lot more relevant to Google's business than other big Google ideas, such as YouTube...
3. $1 billion is couch change for Google.
4. Twitter could conceivably threaten Google's cash cow--search.
5. Like Google, Twitter is already a verb.
We hope Google has a better strategic rationale for acquiring Twitter beyond buying into the hype.

Twitter has raised ~$55 million in funding from venture capitalists including Institutional Venture Partners, Benchmark Capital, Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital and angels Ron Conway, Mike Maples Jr., Chris Sacca and Betaworks.

Wash Post/Tech Crunch: Google to buy Twitter (Rumour) / 2 sources +$250MM

From TechCrunch..."from two separate people close to the negotiations: Google is in late stage negotiations to acquire Twitter. We don't know the price but can assume its well, well north of the $250 million valuation that they saw in their recent funding."

"If this is accurate, it’s a brilliant deal for Google - the value of Twitter is only going to go up over time."

Also, this would be a great deal for the 20 or so Twitter employees as well as Twitter venture investors Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures. Google sure loves to overpay for companies especially when that Company was only recently trying to raise a funding round. It will be quite sad to see Twitter become one of the many subsidiaries lost inside of the Google Machine.