Should Google Buy Twitter, Yahoo Merge with AOL?

There is a lot of talk going on about what should or shouldn't happen among prominent Internet companies (as opposed to what actually is happening). For example, a lot of people have been saying Google should buy Twitter. In many ways, such move would make a great deal of sense for Google, who is looking to up the ante on the social front. Twitter combined with YouTube would be huge for such an initiative. John Battelle makes a case for why this is pretty unlikely though.

He says Twitter won't sell, and that they're in it for the "immortality", not the money. He writes:

Those who decide whether Twitter goes to Google pretty much come down to a handful of folks: Founders Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, and Biz Stone, with COO Dick Costolo and Twitter's investors and other Board members (Fred Wilson, Peter Fenton, and Bijan Sabet). I know most of these guys well enough to say this with confidence: They don't want to sell, and even more importantly, they don't need to.

Now, sure, Google can write a ridiculous check, and perhaps, that might sway the key folks (management). But I doubt it. Why? Because nearly all of them have already sold a company to Google - Blogger (Evan and Biz) or Feeedburner (Dick). And, well, they didn't stick around, did they?

He also says Google won't buy Twitter because Google's learning to be patient.

According to a post from Michael Arrington, Yahoo might as well be dead (and is "the ugly girl at the dance"), because nobody wants to do deals with them. By nobody, we mean Yelp and Foursquare. In reality, Yahoo is far from dead, and they do continue to make strategic deals with other companies. A certain search and advertising deal with Microsoft comes to mind. He's certainly not wrong in that the company has its problems, but it might be a little premature to write its epitaph. Yahoo still has millions of users.

Should AOL and Yahoo merge? Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider makes another interesting case for why the two "struggling Internet giants" should (and says "Big Investors" are calling for it).

Among the reasons he gives are that the two companies run very similar businesses with various similar products. "Yahoo and AOL are both basically media companies," he writes. "They both use technology extensively, but their core competency is producing content to attract an audience and then selling display ads against that audience. They also both operate duplicative mail, instant-messaging, sports, finance, news, maps, and other services, all of which currently compete with each other. That is senseless. By combining, Yahoo and AOL would achieve greater scale and reduce duplication."