We have always seen rumours of Google buying Twitter since it has always been struggling to have a hit social network and Twitter is also not doing as well (and the share price is low).
Google may not have bought Twitter but they have bought a part of it as it was announced that they have acquired Fabric. Fabric was involved in giving tools to developers to develop apps for the Twitter ecosystem and according to them, it has grown to reach 2.5 billion active mobile devices.
In the acquisition, Fabric will join Google’s Developer Products Group where they will be working with the Firebase team (which was also acquired by Google in 2014). “When we met the team at Google, we quickly realized that our missions are the same,” Fabric says on their blog, “helping mobile teams build better apps, understand their users and grow businesses.”
This is a strategic move by Twitter as they continue with their quest to become a leaner company by shedding entities to keep costs down. They did that with Vine months ago (and was finally put to rest 2 days ago) where they revealed that it was costing them 10 million to sustain it.
This could also mean that the assets Twitter has are not safe anymore in their pursuit to bring costs down and become profitable for once. One precarious asset that could be axed off is Periscope since they have now baked its functionality in the Twitter app and we have to see if they will do that eventually.