Report: Twitter nixed $10 billion Google buyout bid

Classify this one under the heading: How to bury the lede.

In an otherwise thoroughly researched and entertaining read, a new piece in Fortune chronicling the life and times of Twitter, waits until 3/4 of the way through the article to launch this bombshell:

"Since Twitter was invented, Internet behemoths have been clamoring to buy it in the belief that it is the one social service with the potential to compete with Facebook. Last fall Microsoft, Google, and Facebook itself all considered buying the company. Microsoft never made an offer, according to sources, but Facebook is believed to have offered $2 billion for Twitter, and Google, by far the most serious, offered as much as $10 billion."

Oh my.

If accurate, then Twitter saved Google's board from what would have been a series of pointed - and embarrassing - questions at the next shareholder meeting. As SAI's Nick Carlson correctly points out, Twitter is suffering through no minor assortment of growing pains at the moment. It's entirely unclear how this chapter in its young corporate history will end. Among the data points Carlson offered for consideration:

A user base estimated at fewer than 20 million active users

Still, a relatively modest sales engine with revenues in the tens of millions of dollars

A board of directors reported to be in disarray

Two part-timers leading its product team

And Google was considering paying $10 billion - or twice Twitter's current valuation? Yowza. The report's blockbuster claims meanwhile inspired the tech website TechCrunch to revisit Twitter's myriad operational missteps and suggest (semi-seriously) that it was time for an intervention before things got out of hand.

Then again, maybe it's one of those counter-factuals that are impossible to prove one way or the other. After all, Google has managed to make little progress with its social network strategy and management perhaps believed this was a solid down-payment which would let it nurture Twitter under its corporate umbrella, much in the same way that YouTube has flourished since its 2006 acquisition.

Instead of taking the offer, however, Twitter had little problem raising another $200 million in a financing round led by venture capital heavyweight Kleiner Perkins. That investment gave the company a valuation of "only" $3.7 billion. Assuming Fortune's sources are on base, give this much to Twitter's board: It takes a lot of brass to walk away $10 billion as if it were chump change. Maybe if Google had thrown in free donuts.