SiliconBeat

Like high schoolers obsessed with romance, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs spend most of their time talking about Company A flirting with Company B, Company A making a pass at Company B, and Company B going all the way with Company A.
This morning, Company A is Google and Company B is Twitter.
Michael Arrington, tech blogger extraordinaire, reported at 9:25 p.m. Thursday night “a heck of a rumor” that he had sourced to three different people. The “news” was that Google and Twitter were in “late stage negotiations.”
The problem? One of sources threw cold water on the rumor, asserting that the companies were in “fairly early stage” discussions.
What’s true is Google and Twitter are talking — though that isn’t exactly breaking news. Google and Twitter know each other well, having had a previous fling over Blogger, which was founded by Evan Williams, Twitter’s co-founder, with some help from Biz Stone, Twitter’s other co-founder. (Google bought Blogger in 2003.)
It’s also true that Twitter is having difficulty with search, which is Google’s forte. And Google is having trouble launching a microblogging service that is as popular with Hollywood as it is with Silicon Valley geeks.
So it is safe to assume that Google is asking Twitter out and that Twitter taking Google’s calls. Are they going to get back together? Hard to know, especially when so many folks at Twitter are formerly Googlers who have publicly celebrated their independence from the Big G.
On the other hand, Twitter could be moving to capitalize on its sudden and wild popularity and seeking to sell itself to the highest bidder. If that’s the case, either Google or Twitter could be quietly leaking news of their talks — while maintaining plausible deniability — in order to affect the price of the deal.