Here’s a belated though interesting bit of news. I wanted to post this item a few weeks ago but life got in the way. I am posting it today because I still think it is newsworthy.
On March 27, I moderated a panel at the Stanford Global Technology Symposium. On the panel were top finance executives from three of the tech industry’s biggest and most acquisitive companies: David Lawee, Vice President of Corporate Development, Google; Dan’l Lewin, Corporate Vice President, Strategic and Emerging Business Development, Microsoft; and Claudia Fan Munce, Vice President Corporate Strategy, IBM & Managing Director, IBM Ventures.
As the moderator of the panel, I was very interested in hearing Lawee’s thoughts on Twitter, particularly after Google CEO Eric Scmidt had recently dissed the company as a “poor man’s email system.” Any time a CEO disses a company in public I take it as a sign that that the exec sees said company as a threat.
As vice president of corporate development, Lawee is responsible for all of the Google’s acquisitions and investments. So I asked if Google would consider buying Twitter. Here’s what he said:
“I think Twitter is an awesome business,” said Lawee. “It is exciting to see that in this downturn there is a company with such breakaway product success. I can’t talk about a specific acquisition of course. There are a lot of companies who look at what Google is doing, and say it’s an interesting business to me, if there is a way for us to get into it. And I think there is a lot of room for innovation once they are in. Twitter is a great example of potentially either of those.”
My takeaway on this comment is that Google respects Twitter, and has clearly been thinking about the company and what it means to Google. Whether or not they have had talks about a potential deal, I don’t know.
But Twitter is clearly a growing presence on Google’s radar. At Google’s Searchology event today, Google executive Marissa Mayer said that real-time search, or finding the most recent information, was the hardest unsolved problem in search.
Makes you wonder even more about what’s going on behind the scenes.
Creative Capital 
May 13, 2009 at 3:21 pm |
David Lawee? Who is that? VP of blabla what at Google? One surely must lose respect for him with his first comment “Twitter is an awesome business”. Twitter isn’t a business. It doesn’t make money. It’s an interesting oddity that has miraculously seeped its way outside of the navel-gazing confines of “The Valley”.
What you’re seeing with Google and its responses to the Twitters of the world is a bunch of stock-option-stuffed execs who will now forever be looking over their shoulders at what could potentially disrupt their riches. After search and the monetization of search, Google has done and will do nothing of any significance. The end of innovation of the G.
May 13, 2009 at 5:56 pm |
Do some research on David Lawee – he is a major con artist. Check out his career outside the valley. He has got something nasty on Google – they give him a job as payola. Twitter is dead.
May 13, 2009 at 4:35 pm |
[…] During a panel at the Stanford Global Technology Symposium, Google’s top M&A guy, VP David Lawee made no secret of his affection for the startup: […]
May 13, 2009 at 5:39 pm |
[…] During a panel at the Stanford Global Technology Symposium, Google’s top M&A guy, VP David Lawee made no secret of his affection for the startup: […]
May 31, 2009 at 4:46 pm |
Thank you for your interesting article. Learned a lot new to subscribe to your news. I would wait for new articles. Good luck.
June 22, 2009 at 11:43 am |
Well its a good sign that google is respecting twitter….n i just heard that they have also decided to make a better search engine for twitter..
July 11, 2009 at 6:03 pm |
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