A source told Reuters that Salesforce.com is also in pursuit.
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Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 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.
Twitter, which is struggling to add new users amid stalled growth, now has a market value of almost $16 billion.
Morningstar analyst Ali Mogharabi said Alphabet would be the best acquirer for Twitter since it has not yet been able to crack social media on its own despite several efforts. Twitter past year added Omid Kordestani, a former Google executive, as an executive chairman of its board.
Twitter shares added 21% on Friday to close at $22.62.
Afshar, however, added that “he was tweeting a personal opinion and not confirming today’s rumours that Salesforce is interested in acquiring Twitter”, Wired.com reported on Saturday.
Google’s engineers could make Twitter easier to use, which could drive user growth, and its sales team could increase advertising opportunities, he said.
Though Twitter might not seem like a natural fit with any of the rumored suitors, he said companies could try to integrate it into existing platforms.
Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff is active in political causes in San Francisco and the two companies are located just blocks from each other in the city. Twitter is also working with Goldman on options besides a full sale, like a divestiture of non-core assets, one of the other people said.
Twitter has never made a profit and sales growth has been slowing in recent quarters.
As of the end of the second quarter, the company had an accumulated loss of almost $2.3 billion since its inception. Both now boast more users than Twitter by most measures even though they are much newer, and advertisers have begun to migrate their ad dollars accordingly.
“Microsoft’s LinkedIn acquisition has raised speculation of a Twitter takeover, though weakening user metrics and lack of clear strategic buyers suggest it wouldn’t command the same premium”, analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence said in a note.
The company’s flagging performance has also spurred talk of a takeover.
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That’s because Twitter, at its essence, is a stream of raw data in the form of conversation snippets from its more than 300 million monthly active users.
