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"Image: weeble.net\nFORTUNE &amp;#8212; At 11:07 a.m. Monday, a brief item hit the business newswires:\nApple may buy Twitter for $10B &amp;#8212; Forbes\nAt first I assumed it was some kind of mistake. But no, there it was on Forbes.com: A 980-word piece by Eric Jackson, one of their regular contributors, pitching Apple&amp;#8217;s \n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAAPL\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t $10 billion purchase of Twitter as the &amp;#8220;next shoe to drop&amp;#8221; after Facebook&amp;#8217;s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram.\nThis is how rumors get started.\nIt wasn&amp;#8217;t that long ago that Apple was supposed to be buying Facebook. Or Disney. Or Yahoo. Or Adobe. Or Tivo. Or Netflix. Or Electronic Arts.\nThat list, published in the \n  New York Times\n, followed an offhand comment by Steve Jobs\u00A0about Apple keeping its cash &amp;#8220;powder dry&amp;#8221; for one or more &amp;#8220;strategic opportunities.&amp;#8221; See here.\nThe rumors didn&amp;#8217;t make sense then and they don&amp;#8217;t now. Facebook and Twitter are not the kind of company Apple buys.\nWhat kind of enterprise does Apple buy? The list below, taken from Wikipedia, is instructive. As the\u00A0entry\u00A0succinctly puts it, paraphrasing\u00A0BusinessWeek&amp;#8216;s Arik Hesseldahl (now at AllThingsD): &amp;#8220;Apple&amp;#8217;s business philosophy is to acquire small companies that can be easily integrated into existing company projects.&amp;#8221;\nFor example:\n\n1997 Next (programming services). Value: $404 million\n1997 Power Computing (cloned computers). $100 million\n1999 Xemplar Education (software). $5 million\n1999 Raycer Graphics (graphic chips). $15 million\n2000 NetSelector (Internet software). Value: NA\n2001 Astarte (DVD authoring software). Value: NA\n2001 bluebuzz (Internet service provider). Value: NA\n2001 Source Technologies (graphics software). Value: NA\n2001 PowerSchool (online info systems services). $62 million\n2002 Nothing Real (special effects software). $15 million\n2002 Zayante (software). $13 million\n2002 Silicon Grail Corp-Chalice (digital effects software). Value: NA\n2002 Emagic (music production software). $30 million\n2002 Propel Software (software). Value: NA\n2005 Fingerworks (gesture recognition). Value: NA\n2006 Silicon Color (software). Value: NA\n2006 Proximity (software). Value: NA\n2008 P.A. Semi (semiconductors). $268 million\n2009 Placebase (maps). Value: NA\n2009 Lala (music streaming). $17 million\n2010 Quattro (mobile advertising). $275 million\n2010 Intrinsity (semiconductors). $121 million\n2010 Siri (voice-recognition software). $200 million\n2010 Poly9 (Web-based mapping). Value: NA\n2010 Polar Rose (face recognition). $29 million\n2010 IMSense (photography). Value: NA\n2011 C3 Technologies (3D Mapping). $267 million\n2011 Anobit (Flash memory management). $390 million\n2012 Chomp (App search). $50 million\n\nSee? Not a Facebook or Yahoo among them. Apple&amp;#8217;s largest acquisition was the 1997 purchase of NeXT that brought Steve Jobs back to the company for $404 million &amp;#8212; about 1/25th the price Jackson is suggesting Apple pay for Twitter.\nSo file this story with the one Forbes ran last week on the significance of Tim Cook&amp;#8217;s visit to gaming powerhouse Valve &amp;#8212; a visit, we later learned, that never took place."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://fortune.com/2012/04/23/silly-rumor-of-the-day-apple-to-buy-twitter-for-10b/>