One by one the likely buyers of struggling social media giant Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) appear to be dropping out of the running.
Twitter’s shares lost around one-sixth of their value in pre-market trading as reports circulated that Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), the company advertising giant Google, is not currently planning to make a bid for Twitter.
Web site recode.net reported that Google will not make a bid for Twitter, citing unnamed sources, and vouches that “Apple is also an unlikely suitor”.
Putting a red line through another potential bidder’s name, Recode said Walt Disney Co (NYSE:DIS) had considered a bid but thought better of it.
Twitter shares hit a high for the year yesterday as bid speculation mounted, with customer relationship management (CRM) software outfit Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) the apparent favourite to make an offer for the US$18.6bn-valued company.
Twitter has featured in Salesforce.com’s service; its Einstein artificial intelligence platform can analyse tweets and other bits of metadata to identify trends that companies can exploit.
Twitter has been operating since March 2006 and has yet to turn a profit.