These are my bookmarks for May 14th from 17:54 to 20:51:

• Google LatLong: Tips & Tricks: Jog your memory with saved locations – For places I don't visit frequently, the hardest part about finding them on Google Maps can be remembering the right address. The dentist's office or a museum, for example — places I've found on Google Maps before, but not quite recently enough to remember the exact address to search for a second time. Fortunately, when I'm signed in to my Google account, Google Maps automatically saves the addresses I search for. The Saved Locations list can hold up to 100 different places — an indispensable address book that I add to each time I search for somewhere new.
• Waiting for the Billionth Download – O’Reilly Radar – Over the next week, the iTunes App Store is set to record its billionth download, an impressive milestone given that it launched less than a year ago. Granted the actual usage of most apps is spotty. To mark the event, I'm updating a few charts that I produced for previous posts.
• #googlefail – Twitter Search – The trending twitter topic of Google #fail
• Apple has made no more than $20-45m in revenue from the app store « Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog – About a month ago Apple announced that one billion iphone apps have been downloaded in the first nine months. That’s an amazing number. I wondered how much money Apple was making from the app store.
• Reports point to widespread Google outages | Digital Media – CNET News – Many people found Google's search site was extremely slow or inaccessible Thursday, and other reports pointed to troubles with other properties including YouTube, Gmail, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Google Docs, AdSense, and Blogger.
• It’s Down! The Day Google Stood Still (Updated) – ReadWriteWeb – We have seen our fair share of failures from web based products, but this morning, for a large number of users (at least in the U.S.), it looks like every Google service has been either wiped off the Internet or is running extremely slow for a large number of users. Even Google Search is only creeping along slowly right now, and YouTube, Google Reader, Blogger, Google Analytics, Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Apps are pretty much unavailable as well.
• Cloudy day: Google falters; Packets lost in key cities | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com – We’re getting various reports via that Google services are down or at least sucking some serious wind. The service appears to be back as of noon-ish EDT in New York City, but packets are still being lost around the globe. The fail whale Google style:

There have been a lot of rumours about  how Apple, with its mighty war chest is planning to buy Twitter . The latest rumours include a price tag of $700m which is no small amount of beans. But if you put the money element to one side (they can clearly afford it) I don’t see why Apple would want to buy Twitter.

I offer 5 reasons why I think Apple won’t buy Twitter.

1. Twitter is not in their business model. They make hardware and software and they make damn good devices. Buying a chip maker is a logical business move – buying a micro blogging platform with no visible business model is not. Don’t forget Apple is a public company so they can’t just buy on a whim.

2. Apple are not in the portal space. If Apple owned its own search engine or portal (I don’t consider Mobile Me to be there yet) then adding on Twitter would be a logical extension. Apple has huge brand love so a portal would be a good move but would need to be in place before a big leap to tweeting. (I have always thought they should buy Ask Jeeves and make something of it…)

3. Twitter still does not have a business model – how can a public company possibly judge the real value of twitter over the hype when there is no real projection of income (that we as the public have seen). There is a real danger of paying way too much for the business – Google continues to be dogged about the YouTube value.

4. Apple does not have a history of such purchases and does not need Twitter to grow its core business. Microsoft, on the other hand does. I would suggest Microsoft has deeper pockets than Apple.

5. Apple is a very strong brand and takes a lot of effort to maintain the brand experience. This is why the machines are sealed, this is why all apps have to be approved. Anything that works with Apple or represents Apple must enhance the brand. Buying Twitter which is a collection of people saying whatever they want, has the potential to be a massive headache to Apple should things go wrong or innapropriate content appear.

So I just don’t see it. Apple do have a habit of suprising us all, but I would suggest their mooted tablet development would have more potential ‘wow’ factor and logical business extension than buying Twitter.

What do you think?

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