Twitter is refusing to pay Google for cloud services. Here’s why it matters, and what the fallout could be for users
3 years ago by Briongloid to c/technology
Yea exactly, clearly intentional in a manner that his rabid fanboys will gloss right over and direct their rage at Google or whoever else he ends up blaming.
When I first heard all of this I thought it was just a ridiculous rumour. Out of all the things Elon has done this probably surprises me the most. Google is probably one of a handful of entities that he can't push around.
They want the money or its a sunk cost. Very few companies can afford to say no to billions of dollars and someone like Google just has to push a button in order to pull out of the deal, there's no aftermath to clean up. On the other hand, you have someone like their office landlord which will have to put in a lot of work to find new tenants and clean up the property. They won't be so willing to cut ties.
I’m gonna be honest, as someone who couldn’t give less of a crap what happens to Twitter, it’s just hilarious at this point. This is the kind of dumpster fire that warms your hands when it’s really cold out, so you just keep coming back to look at it.
Pure poetry
"It worked so far. I wonder what I'm doing wrong now. I'm probably slipping. I just need to try (to be an asshole) harder."
“Doesn’t work out in your favor”
You know you’re talking about a guy that became a billionaire by being a jerk to lots of people and even scamming governments, right?
And he could do all that by using money from his father, which became super rich by making lots of Africans work like slaves in mines.
Being a jerk is a lifestyle that pays a lot, unfortunately.
It works out in their favour at the cost of literally everyone else
That could explain the limits today and changing APIs, blocking Nitter and users not logged in...
The login-block appears to be exasperating the issue, by creating a pull loop, they are DDOS-ing themselves. ~source
They turned off non logged in people, to save resources and it caused the opposite effect, too bad they fired all those developers.
The Twitter meltdown looks like it’s gathering pace.
Astonishing how the ultra rich can just get away without paying their bills. Isn’t he also behind on rent for loads of Twitter offices? Not to mention not honouring severance pay agreements.
Wonder if debtors prison is still a thing anywhere in the world …
undefined> staff
This is what boggles my mind about businesses wanting all staff to be in the office full time. Smart businesses have figured out a way to rotate staff or have certain people be exclusively remote. It lets them reduce their office footprint and save money on leases.
It is very typical for businesses of all sizes to delay payments, not just rich. That's one of the reasons why industrial applications, tools and goods are so expensive - you always need a healthy money buffer when you're doing B2B.
When you pay way too much for a barely-profitable business you have to cut costs somewhere. Firing 80% of the staff and refusing to pay the rent was just the beginning.
Twitter has already been evicted by one landlord so far.
That was a nice office location, too. The whole city is like a little tech hub
Google has taken over blocks of Boulder and put up tons of office space there. One has a massive rock climbing wall
Having never used Twitter because even at its inception I thought it was a dumb idea, watching it collapse is quality entertainment.
I'm glad since when I found my Twitter rss feeds interrupted it actually pushed me to setup mastodon rss feeds for the first time. I hope Elon keeps this rates limits in place and announces like super blue premium for unlimited access.
Normally a company the size of Twitter might get a grace period from Google to pay their bill. Since its been pretty clear that Musk doesn't even pay rent on office building anymore, I wonder if Google will cease all access to the Twitter servers/services running in GCP immediately and demand payment before allowing access again.
I'm gonna point out that the author of that article closes out with this ..
In a worst-case scenario, Twitter may collapse or destabilise if certain elements within it go offline. Aside from Twitter trolls, this outcome would be in nobody’s best interest. So it’s more likely Twitter and Google Cloud will find a mutually agreeable way forward.
And offers exactly zero information to back that warning up. Just a vague hint at bias, "Google better let Twitter not pay or no one will benefit"... Doesn't sound very objective to me.
Because I think it would be in quite a few people's best interests for Twitter to shut down, maybe when it's owner, but definitely a lot of users and the rest of us fed up with journalism being defined by Twitter.
Their new CEO started paying their google bills: https://arstechnica.com/...
Edit: actually maybe not, this may be what happened and that despite earlier reports the new CEO was resolving it. Proper payment may not have actually happened…
Original post:
This is old news and it’s already been resolved. It was a negotiating tactic. Not uncommon and the news cycle just ate it up even though it’s mostly a non-issue.
Though I still think Elon is running Twitter into the ground..
Many people relied on Twitter before Dorsey left the company and have been stuck there, out of the blue they became hostages to the idiotic whims of a sick man who hasn't had a healthy night's sleep in what seems like decades, a mind eroding into dust.
I prefer to feel empathy for these people. As with Reddit, this whole thing is a grotesque charade with plenty of collateral damage.
Unfortunately there are people, especially artists, who rely on Twitter for their career. Few social media platforms are widely used enough and enable viral spread enough to serve those needs. Mastodon unfortunately doesn't have enough adoption for it, and Instagram can be a lot more fussy when it comes to sharing and discoverability.
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"Google Cloud hosts many of Twitter’s trust and safety services. If the disagreement isn’t resolved by the end of the month, and if Twitter severs ties with Google Cloud, this could seriously threaten its ability to fight spam, remove child sexual abuse material and generally protect accounts."
So, it only breaks things that are vitally important for Twitter, as well as legally mandated, but not anything Musk actually cares about...
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