Comic Update: Doug Bowman’s Nightmare

April 06, 2009

Is Google really buying Twitter? Techcrunch certainly is committed to telling us it is so. In response to the buzz, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone had a recent, short, non-committal post that sums up with the phrase “Sometimes We Talk“, which seems to indicate is that Twitter probably isn’t going the way of the big search giant. And some, like Kara Swisher, are flat out saying that no, Google isn’t buying Twitter.

So who to believe? Time, I’m thinking, as it proves more accurate than any pundit’s predictions. What I find interesting is the gut reaction by many (including myself) that Google buying our favorite little micro-whatever service would be a bad thing. I don’t know why that is, maybe some sort of fear of the mega-giant absorbing the entire Internet and branding it with rainbow text. Yet, I’ll admit, they’ve done right by me so far. Their search, maps, mail, rss reader, analytics and news services are all tools I use daily. They clearly are providing me with content access that matters to me. So why am I unhappy with the idea of them handling 140 character text messages?

Maybe I’ll never know. But I do know one man who has very concrete reasons for disliking the idea of an acquisition: Doug Bowman. Once designing for Google, he recently parted with them due to a number of reasons involving dozens of shades of blue, and has moved over to design for Twitter. I can only imagine how horrible it’d be to finish setting up your desk to find that you don’t have to change your business cards at all.

Today’s comic documents such a tragic incident.

[Edit: As noted in the comment below, Kara Swisher corrected me in stating that what she was in fact saying was that Google is not in any late-stage talks for acquiring Twitter, as opposed to "not buying Twitter". It was my mistake in misinterpreting her point. Check out the link in her comment for more from her on that topic, though.]

2 Responses to “Comic Update: Doug Bowman’s Nightmare”

  1. Squirrel:

    Nice post. Nice name!

    But to clarify, I was refuting the TechCrunch report that Google was in “late-stage” acquisition talks, which was a fact or not, and not that Google might or might not buy Twitter someday, which is speculation thus far.

    In fact, in many posts previous to this hubbub, I have named Google as the likeliest acquirer and urged the search giant to consider buying Twitter.

    Here is my most recent on interest in Twitter from Google and many other tech bigwigs, in which I posit that Twitter should sell or stop the madness and get busy building a profitable, independent business, as one of its founder said last week it wanted to:

    With Inbox Clogged With Admirers, Twitter Should Ignore the Hype and Get Back to Work: http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090405/with-inbox-clogged-with-admirers-twitter-should-ignore-the-hype-and-get-back-to-work/

    Thx,

    Kara

  2. Kara,

    Thanks for clarifying! I’ll make edit notes accordingly to save me from too much embarrassment. Also, your follow-up April 5th post that you link is a great continuation of that topic!