NEW GOOGL BUYING TWTR RUMOR OUT.....
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Twitter (TWTR) will be sold in the next year and it will be sold to Alphabet's (GOOGL) Google unit, former Yahoo (YHOO) interim CEO Ross Levinsohn predicted on CNBC's "Halftime Report" on Friday afternoon.
"Google is sitting on so much money," yet besides acquiring YouTube in 2006, Google doesn't have a large footprint in the social space, he noted. Twitter is a "great real-time information product," but needs to be a "part of something bigger" like Google.
His comments come as both Google and Salesforce.com (CRM) lost interest in acquiring Twitter earlier this month. Walt Disney (DIS) may still be interested in acquiring Twitter, Betaville reported on Tuesday.
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Salesforce.com shareholders made it very clear to CEO Marc Benioff that they did not think buying Twitter was a smart move.
While there would probably be similar "noise" if Google went forward with buying Twitter, it would dissipate over time as the stock went back up and Twitter became integrated into the company, Levinsohn said. "They'll be able to turn it around."
Twitter is expected to sell for about $20 billion.
In addition, CEO Jack Dorsey needs to choose if he wants to run Twitter or Square (SQ) instead of splitting his time between the two companies, Levinsohn argued. Dorsey is a "dynamic visionary," but "it's impossible to do two jobs."
"They're at that critical moment, and I really do expect that to be transacted sometime over the next year," he concluded.
Shares of Twitter were higher in mid-afternoon trading on Friday.
