Google is world’s most popular search engine and Twitter is fast becoming the most popular social platform on the web. So, does it make sense for Google to buy Twitter? It’s been nearly a year since the rumor of Google-Twitter acquisition originated and it doesn’t seem to be coming to an end any time soon.

Meanwhile, the landscape of both companies has changed significantly since 2009. Google has been on a rigorous shopping spree mopping up one startup after another, albeit none in the social media space. Meanwhile, Twitter’s popularity has skyrocketed in the last several months and it has transformed itself from being “just another micro-blogging service” to becoming the “world’s most popular social media network”.

So, why will or why should Google buy Twitter? Let’s find out.

1) Google Buzz and Google Wave are disaster

Despite being a Google fan boy, I’m forced to admit that Google’s forays into social networking were complete disaster. Google Buzz and Google Wave came & went, nobody noticed. After all, there was nothing much to notice in both Buzz and Wave. Google got its strategy wrong by promoting Buzz and Wave as plugins that operate through Gmail. The Wave UI is nothing to write about and to top it all; Google messed up big time on the privacy front with Buzz.

Google Buzz lost out big time due to the heavy negative publicity because of its privacy woes. And to be honest, it has never recovered since then. I don’t see Google Buzz coming even remotely close to Twitter as a competitor social platform, so it makes perfect sense for Google to open up its wallet, get Twitter in the bag and scrap Wave, and maybe not Buzz, altogether.

2) Twitter is over capacity

While Twitter is a great service and I’m one of its staunch admirers, I’m really disappointed with the increasing crashes and down times. The blue whale with the “Twitter is over capacity. Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again” happens way too often than what I can digest.

I strongly believe that Twitter is finding it very difficult to come to terms with the exponential user growth that it has over the last several months. The service is no longer robust and I fear that things are only bound to get worse. While Twitter has the option to add more hardware to its data centers and/ or move to a better hosting service like Amazon, I see that as temporary solutions. IMO, no other company can handle scaling traffic better than Google. It is the undisputed leader in distributed computing and knows the secrets of scalability much better than the Twitter team.

3) Beware of Microsoft

Microsoft has made a strong comeback in the search segment with Bing. If Google doesn’t buy Twitter, Microsoft will surely give it a try. Having snapped up Yahoo’s search business, Steve Balmer is looking for a few more high-profile acquisitions in order to set the record straight with Google. Twitter is a great source of instantaneous information – breaking news, links, reviews, conversations between people and what not, a perfect recipe for a search engine feed.

Do you agree that Google will eventually buy Twitter? Is it a question of when rather than why? Whatever your thoughts be, leave your comment and we’ll be glad to hear from you.