Twitter rumoured to be on sale; Google among tech giants that express interest

Twitter is rumoured to be on sale and several technology giants are said to have expressed interest for a take-over. The apparent reasons for this development are losses amounting to millions of dollars annually, apart from depreciating growth as far as users are concerned.

The micro-blogging site is said to have initiated discussions with various technology companies, including Google Inc. for a sell-out, Reuters reported, quoting anonymous sources from CNBC. Google is also said to be the frontrunner for securing the bid to buy Twitter. 

American cloud-computing company Salesforce.com is also among the likely candidates, who have initiated negotiations for the purchase. American wireless service provider Verizon was until recently being viewed as a potential buyer of Twitter but the company has stated that it was yet to submit bids.

However, analysts seem to share a different view as far as Google and Salesforce are concerned. "From a strategic standpoint, we think it would be more beneficial for Alphabet as opposed to Salesforce," an analyst at Independent Investment Research firm Morningstar said. Alphabet was founded in October 2015 by Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who are the Alphabet CEO and president, respectively.

Twitter had announced earlier this week that it would discontinue its engineering operations in India. This could impact close to 100 employees working in the San Francisco-based company's development centre in Bengaluru.