Interesting read: Microsoft or Google Will Buy Twitter in 2010

So basically, instead of Google (GOOG) managing leads and referrals for you through their organic and paid search database, Twitter will offer you referrals through their followers and advertisers database. Great. Glad we know the plan.

The thing is, Twitter, I think, won’t charge for any of this, at least not initially.

Recall that with the $25 million that Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia gave Google, it was enough to bankroll free-freaking-search to users. Don’t you think Evan Williams, Biz Stone, Fred Wilson et al. will be able to keep Twitter free long enough thanks to their $100M until Google realizes that Twitter is doing what Microsoft (MSFT) threatened to do, which is make ads free so that Google loses revenue?

Once this materializes – and it’s possible to argue that it already has – then either:

– MSFT will buy Twitter so it can continue to keep referrals free, forcing Google to reduce their cost-per-click rates down, and thus lose revenue,

or…

– Google will buy Twitter to do what it does best: shut it down and avoid this scenario from happening.