This really isn’t news per se. Facebook made a run at them late last year but fell short in their bid. Now comes Google.

Robert Scoble has weighed in. I think Scoble raises some excellent points in this post. I have wondered lately if large corporations can really handle social computing. There is too much risk. And in the interest of full disclosure, let me say that I am a Product Manager on a social computing platform at Microsoft. I spend a lot of time thinking about risk. He is tough on IBM, Oracle, and Adobe but toughest on Microsoft. I think he is daring Microsoft to do it but daring Microsoft to do it in the right way. Take the risk, he is saying. He backs Google only to the extent that they will know how to use the technology but hints at what the future of Twitter will be if Google buys them…oblivion. They will chop the code up and use what they can to further their own initiatives but Twitter will be no more. Read more…