Should Google Buy Twitter? (videos)

UPDATE: Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is out and co-founder Jack Dorsey, who is also CEO of Square, will serve as interim-CEO effective July 1. Costolo will reportedly remain on the board.
Investors (see below) had been calling for changes in Twitter's strategy--stock is up in after-hours trading.



Om Malik: Google Should Buy Twitter - Om Malik, a partner at True Ventures, and Bloomberg's Joshua Topolsky preview Twitter's 2015 Annual Meeting of Stockholders on Wednesday, June 3, 2015 . They spoke with Bloomberg's Emily Chang on "Bloomberg West" (June 3, 2015).

Stock Exchange: Stock Symbol(s) - market capitalization (June 5, 2015):

• NYSE: TWTR - $24.23 Billion
• NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL - $369.97 Billion

Google is holding $65 Billion in cash - source: Sizemore Insights | charlessizemore.com. See also: Google's Cash Position | Seeking Alpha.

Twitter 2015 Annual Meeting

• Listen to webcast
• 2015 Proxy Statement - URL PDF 404.3 KB
• 2014 Annual Report - URL PDF 3.9 MB 

Chris Sacca, 40-year-old California billionaire and Twitter stockholder wrote a blog post critique of  over 8,000 words that was published and widely noted hours before Twitter’s annual shareholder meeting ... Later in the afternoon in an interview with CNBC [see below], Sacca said Twitter would be a “good fit” for an acquisition by Google see video below.

"Twitter would be an "instant fit" for Google, should the Internet search giant acquire the company, early Twitter investor Chris Sacca said Wednesday. "I think it's a fantastic use of Google's cash," the founder of Lowercase Capital said in an interview with CNBC's "Closing Bell" [above]. "This is the thing that Google has never had. They've never understood social, they've never understood those personal interactions. This bolts right in cleanly... Sacca also stressed that he wasn't threatening to sell his stake in Twitter. "I'm not out there selling shares ... This is a very, very long-term hold, and I know this company is going to be massively more valuable than it is today."" source: CNBC.com (emphasis added)

See: Chris Sacca--What Twitter Can Be. | LOWERCASE capital

And a critique on Seeking Alpha of  Sacca's article--excerpt below--

"... Perhaps the biggest mistake Sacca made was in not establishing his bona fides before launching. Sacca, a former Google employee, is well known in Silicon Valley, but almost completely unknown on Wall Street. What the Street wanted was for Sacca to shop his ideas around privately, to specific private equity firms and brokerages, before going public ... In fact, like many tech guys, he's probably on to something else right now ... But that's not how Wall Street works. These ideas are great, but they're not going anywhere, and neither is the stock until something like them is taken seriously. If Dan Loeb or Dan Ackman wrote this, in other words, we'd all be screaming buy, buy, buy..." --Why Sacca's Twitter Gambit Failed | Seeking Alpha (emphasis added)

see also: Twitter Announces Secondary For Shares Related To TellApart Buyout: How Successful Will It Be? - | Seeking Alpha

Domain Mondo opinion:
1. Should Google Buy Twitter? From Google's viewpoint--Yes--Twitter has what Google needs in Social and Mobile and this--Facebook and Twitter Will Take 33% Share of US Digital Display Market by 2017 - eMarketer--Google needs the Twitter platforms for mobile advertising growth.
2. Will Google use any of its cash or earnings for dividends or buybacks? No, not in the near future. Brin and Page are relatively young and have too many acquisitions and new projects still to do before Google starts "throwing off" cash to stockholders, unless, of course, the stock price becomes too "cheap"--and then, only provided Google does not otherwise have better use for the cash.

Principal domain names: google.com | twitter.com
Twitter apps: Periscope and Vine

referenced:
Bloomberg Business: bloomberg.com
True Ventures | Early Stage Capital: trueventures.com
Stock Markets ... - CNBC: cnbc.com
LOWERCASE capital: lowercasecapital.com
Stock Market Insights | Seeking Alpha: seekingalpha.com

see also on Domain Mondo: 2015 Google Stockholders Annual Meeting (video)


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A Few Things Worth Reading

Many say forget ICANN--it's hopelessly conflicted and inept--and new gTLD domain names? Only tech oxymorons need more 1980s technology in the Mobile Apps Age of 2015! So, what do you really need to know about modern life and culture today? Bob Lefsetz starts us off--

Lefsetz Letter » Never Say Never: "Coke is in a tailspin, McDonald’s is dying, a star football player retires after one year of play, Apple offers twenty five TV channels for $30-$40 and SXSW is now a tech, not a music, festival. Dude, what happened to my country?".... The world will be saved by people. Who think. And lead thereupon....." (read more at the link above)

GoDaddy And The Eternal Optimism Of Retail IPO Punters - GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE:GDDY) | Seeking Alpha: "... Despite reams of historical evidence that most IPOs are overpriced and represent poor medium-term investments, there is an almost-unending stream of retail punters who jump into the next 'hot' IPO at almost any price, often on the basis of name recognition alone, only to be sorely disappointed in the months that follow... If GDDY was an early-stage growth company with an undefined 'blue sky' growth opportunity, these kinds of multiples and day-one enthusiasm would at least be explainable. But in response to the listing of a two-decades old business with a history of operating losses, a mostly mature (or at least maturing) market, a large majority of the share count yet to enter the float, the specter of numerous secondary offerings from motivated PE sellers; and, of course, listed comps trading at a fraction of the valuation, GDDY at $26 is beyond expensive..."

Facebook hosting doesn't change things, the world already changed — Remains of the Day: "... The value of being a generalist as a reporter, someone who just shows up and asks questions and transcribes them into a summary article, is not that valuable. If you cover an industry, do you understand that industry? Take tech reporters as an example, many of them don't understand the underlying technology they write about. That may have sufficed in a bygone age, but it no longer does... Taking the time to become an expert in a domain still has value because it takes hard work, and that is also not a resource that is equally distributed in the world...."

11 Points A Somewhat Bearish Long Has Wrong About Google | Seeking Alpha: "Advertising is how it has chosen to monetize the information flow it facilitates. In my eyes, the worst thing Google could do is get away from its position where it is comfortably collecting a royalty on the creation and flow of information."

How Super Angel Chris Sacca Made Billions, Burned Bridges And Crafted The Best Seed Portfolio Ever: ".... Camp, who sold StumbleUpon to eBay for $75 million in 2007, had the idea to make an app so his friends could book a black car to take them around town. He first called it UberCab. Camp’s friend and early advisor, the author Tim Ferriss, remembers that the idea seemed “ridiculous” to many outside the Jam Pad circle. “People who had the opportunity to invest laughed it off as this one-percenter vanity service,” Ferriss says. “Chris was not one of them. He had faith very early on.” Kalanick became a mega-advisor of sorts to the fledgling startup, and Sacca wanted a piece. The pair cemented the startup’s angel $1.3 million financing at the Truckee house, with Sacca ponying up $300,000, a large check for an $8 million fund. “I went all-in,” he says. More than just money, he helped negotiate Kalanick’s compensation and secure the Uber name from Universal Music Group. Lowercase would add another $400,000 worth of Uber at the Series A round in early 2011, led by Benchmark Capital’s Bill Gurley ..." (read more at the link above)
(emphasis added)

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