Google is rumoured to be close to buying Twitter, according to an influential technology blog.

Michael Arrington, the author of TechCrunch, claims to have spoken to two sources close to the matter, suggesting that negotiations are in the late stages. He believes Google would have to pay well above the $250 million (£170 million) valuation of Twitter suggested by a recent round of venture capital funding.

Biz Stone, Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s founders, were involved in negotiations to sell their micro-blogging service to Facebook last year, but the deal broke down. Sources have said that it would have cost Facebook $500 million in stock.

Peter Thiel, an executive involved in the negotiations, hinted that the deal could not be completed because of disputes over the valuation of the company and over who would run Twitter in the future.

“Why would Google want Twitter?” wrote Mr Arrington. “We’ve been arguing for some time that Twitter’s real value is in search. It holds the keys to the best real-time database and search engine on the internet, and Google doesn’t even have a horse in the game.”

The senior executives of both companies have a history of dealing with one another. Mr Williams and Mr Stone sold their start-up, Blogger, to Google five years ago.

Analysts said that Google’s acquisition of Twitter would make sense for both companies. Google would benefit by developing its search offering, taking advantage of the real-time information provided by users of the micro-blogging site. Twitter’s founders would make money by being bought out of a business from which they had struggled to reap significant revenues.

Jeff Mann, vice president at Gartner research, said: “Twitter's value is in its content, growing by 6 million tweets per day. Twitter is attractive because it has built a service that attracts this much volume, creating a constantly growing, twitching, seething real-time source of comments, news and opinions.

“The culture and ambitions of Twitter and Google match. The Twitter founders sold Blogger to Google earlier and work on the same principle of build first, monetise later.

“Now is the time for Twitter to sell. It is at the top of its hype range now. Monetising on its own would be a long, hard slog.”

Twitter’s popularity has exploded in recent months. According to the internet market research specialist comScore, Twitter’s traffic in the US, excluding visitors using mobile phones, grew from 6.1 million unique users in January to nearly 9.8 million users in February.

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