a Twitter in the vortex of the Internet economy?

Who buys Twitter?     

By way of background, Twitter bought the search engine Summize in July of 2008, raised $35m more in capital last month, and reportedly turned down a $500m offer from Facebook.

Why is this notable?

If Twitter's future is similar to other fast-growing technology first-movers, Twitter will eventually be bought by a large player, sooner rather than later, like NewsCorp bought MySpace, Google bought YouTube, and eBay bought Skype.

While Google may be at the top of most people's minds as the most likely buyer of Twitter, given its value as a fast-growing originator of searches,   Google CEO Eric Schmidt's much-reported dissing of Twitter as a "poor man's email" struck me as strange, and prompted me to noodle about why Google is uncharacteristically talking down such a popular first-mover app?

• One theory is that they are just trying to talk down the price they might have to pay for Twitter. I don't buy that one, price was no obstacle for YouTube and they have oodles of cash and are generating more.
• The theory that makes most sense to me is that Google has concluded that after the DOJ blocked Google-Yahoo and effectively declared Google a monopoly in both the search advertising market and the search advertising syndication (outsourcing) markets, Google does not want to take the antitrust risk of buying Twitter, or trying to outsource search or search advertising in some way to Twitter.
• Apparently Google appreciates that:
  • The DOJ regrets having passed on a detailed review of Google's purchase of YouTube, not realizing that within roughly a years time, YouTube would be the second largest generator of searches in the world, and 25% of all of Google's searches, accelerating and solidifying Google's dominance of this market via acquisition -- exactly what antitrust merger reviews are supposed to prevent.
  • The FTC regrets approving the Google acquisition of DoubleClick, failing to anticipate that within months of the FTC's approval, Yahoo would attempt to give up competing fully with Google and partner with Google in search advertising. 

Bottom line: 

Google's uncharacteristic disinterest in Twitter, a property that historically Google would have already bought, is a not-so-subtle indicator that  antitrust will continue to be very "relevant" at the vortex of the Internet economy.