Google Closing In On Twitter Buy, Realtime Search Engine In Works?

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TechCrunch updated its initial story to say that Google and Twitter were indeed in talks, that those talks were in the "fairly early" stages and that the two were putting their heads together over a realtime search engine through Google.

The Web site's sources didn't specify how Google would pay for Twitter, except to speculate cash, stock or a combination of the two.

As the news raced around the blogosphere on Friday morning and got picked up by the mainstream press, Reuters reported a Google spokesman in London had no comment and Twitter spokespeople could not be reached.

While neither Twitter nor social networking tyrannosaurus Facebook have figured out how to make serious money off social networking, earlier this week Twitter revised its realtime search capabilities for Tweets, leading to speculation that those nips and tucks were making it ever more attractive to Google.

"When you search, you're asking for any tweets that contain the word or phrase you're interested in right now," wrote Twitter co-founder Biz Stone on the official Twitter blog Wednesday. "So if you want to know what people are saying about the city you live in, the products you use, or just something weird, it becomes a link on your home page. When you click on a trend link, you can read the tweets and find out what's up. Trends is in beta—but it has potential."

Google activated its own Twitter account back in February. Twitter founders Stone and Evan Williams have dealt with Google before, too— they sold Blogger to Google back in 2003.

Twitter in November turned down a $500 million offer to be acquired by Facebook, but in the past few weeks was said to have raised $35 million from venture capital partners.