Twitter Buyout Redux

When Google set up a Twitter account last week, all sorts of people who get paid to pretend they know what Google is going to do next predicted that this was a precursor to the company's multi-million-dollar acquisition of the buzzy new communication service. On Tuesday, CEO Eric Schmidt seemed to throw a big bucket of cold water on the rumors when he contemptuously dismissed Twitter at the Morgan Stanley tech conference: "I view all of these as sort of poor man's e-mail systems."

Woof. Looks as if Google isn't so keen on Twitter after all. Or is it? Motley Fool writer Rick Munarriz claims that Schmidt's taunt was actually a sign that Google plans to buy Twitter, and right quick. "Google is now three weeks away from swallowing Twitter whole," he writes.

Consider the case of Microsoft and Facebook, Munarriz explains. Back in 2007, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer dropped a few snotty remarks about how the social-networking site was just a toy that had no shelf life: "There's a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people." Three weeks later, the company bought a piece of Facebook for $240 million. Munarriz thinks the same thing is about to happen to Twitter. "This is how it works, people," he writes. "When there's a perceived threat, you poke it with a stick. If it moves—and you're a cash-rich company—you buy it. ... Enjoy these last few weeks of being single, Twitter."

If there's an inverse relationship between a CEO's level of public contempt and the price he's willing to pay, Twitter got a piece of bad news last night when Schmidt went on CNBC and, shall we say, clarified his own remarks from the day before. When asked whether his quip meant he was planning to buy Twitter, Schmidt refused to speculate, but added, "We admire Twitter. We think Twitter did a very good job of exposing a whole new way to communicate. In context, if you read what I said, I was talking about the fact that communication systems are not going to be separate. They're all going to become intermixed in various ways. People will use e-mail, they will want to use Twitter Facebook."

Wait, so now he admires Twitter? Does this mean Google's not going to buy it, a la the Munarriz school of public negotation? These high-flying deals leave us so confused.

New York Times business reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin followed up by asking Schmidt a more general question about Google's strategy. Typically, downturns are a perfect opportunity for cash-rich companies like Google to gobble up the small fry. Why, considering the downturn's severity, hasn't Google tried to buy companies that are feeling the pinch?