Twitter stiffs Google
Musk won't pay his Google Cloud bill — and the company's trust and safety systems are hanging in the balance
Pardon the interruption to your weekend, but we couldn’t wait until Monday to tell you about this one. So here’s a quick Saturday edition of the newsletter.
Twitter has refused to pay its Google Cloud bills as its contract comes up for renewal this month, Platformer has learned, leading to a high-stakes conflict between the companies that could result in Twitter’s trust and safety teams being crippled.
While Twitter hosts some services on its own servers, the company has long contracted with Google and Amazon to complement its infrastructure. Prior to Musk buying Twitter last year, the company signed a multi-year contract with Google to host services related to fighting spam, removing child sexual abuse material, and protecting accounts, among other things.
Twitter has been trying to renegotiate its contract with Google since at least March, the Information reported that month. It had also delayed payments to Amazon Web Services, leading the company to threaten withholding advertising payments.
