Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said on Friday following a report that Google was seeking to purchase the hot micro-blogging service that his goal was to build a “profitable, independent company.”
Stone, in a brief post on the Twitter blog, said that “it should come as no surprise that Twitter engages in discussions with other companies regularly and on a variety of subjects.
“Our goal is to build a profitable, independent company and we’re just getting started,” Stone said in the post, which he called “a response to the latest Internet speculation about where Twitter is headed.”
Stone’s comments came hours after influential technology blogger Michael Arrington, writing on his blog TechCrunch, said Internet search giant Google was in talks to acquire the hot San Francisco-based startup.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, Arrington said the price was unknown but it was likely to be “well, well north” of the US$250 million valuation placed on Twitter in a recent round of venture capital funding.
Arrington said Google would pay cash or publicly valued stock for Twitter, which turned down a US$500 million takeover offer from social network colossus Facebook just a few months ago.
Arrington initially reported that Google and Twitter were in “late-stage negotiations” but he backed off that assertion slightly in a later post in which he said the acquisition talks were “still fairly early stage.”
Kara Swisher, another respected Silicon Valley blogger, writing on her blog Boomtown, dismissed the report by rival TechCrunch.
“While the ‘news’ that Google was in ‘late-stage’ talks to acquire Twitter, which TechCrunch reported last night, certainly sounds exciting, it isn’t accurate in any way,” Swisher said.
Swisher said the two firms have held “product-related discussions” around “real-time search and the search giant better crawling the microblogging service.”
“No negotiations, no deal, nada,” she quoted an unnamed source as saying.
Twitter’s potential as a real-time search engine has sparked recurring bouts of speculation that Google may be interested in buying the company.
“We’ve been arguing for some time that Twitter’s real value is in search,” Arrington said. “It holds the keys to the best real time database and search engine on the Internet and Google doesn’t even have a horse in the game.”
Google chief executive Eric Schmidt took some flak earlier this year for calling Twitter a “poor man’s e-mail” but backed away from the description in later comments saying “we admire Twitter.”
“We think Twitter did a very good job of exposing a whole new way to communicate,” he said.
But he said Google was not in the market for acquisitions at the moment.
“I’m not sure prices are at their low yet,” Schmidt said. “The situation globally is pretty dire. We are certainly looking. We haven’t seen anything yet that was really exciting.”
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
Taiwanese suppliers to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) are expected to follow the contract chipmaker’s step to invest in the US, but their relocation may be seven to eight years away, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. When asked by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) in the legislature about growing concerns that TSMC’s huge investments in the US will prompt its suppliers to follow suit, Kuo said based on the chipmaker’s current limited production volume, it is unlikely to lead its supply chain to go there for now. “Unless TSMC completes its planned six
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new