Twitter setting off a bidding war?

Rumours today from TechCrunch that Google is in talks to buy Twitter:

Here’s a heck of a rumor that we’ve sourced 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.

While we can understand why Google may want to buy them, its not at all clear why Twitter would sell right now - they've taken in enough money to run for at least 18 months and can probably double their potential value in a year. And if they can crack Real Time Adwords.....

Also, their best option if they are wanting to sell is to set off a bidding war, as they are one of those assets where the prize in ownership turns the bid winner into the new "next generation" social network top player. Mind you, what better a way of flushing out buyers than news that Google is trying to buy them?

Another snippet from TechCrunch:

Yet another source says the acquisition discussions are still fairly early stage, and the two companies are also considering working together on a Google real time search engine.

This is amusing - we won a CBA award last year as a "most promising London startup" because of our real time search engine technology, and at the "graduation" session a Google M&A chap looked us over, turned up his nose and trotted off. He didn't "get" real time search at all

No doubt the drums are sending new instructions now - what a difference a year makes....