Twitter under Elon Musk, more known as Twitter 2.0, has been through a lot of trouble lately. From mass layoffs to poor decision-making, this eventually led to the company losing a significant percentage of its value. Now, Twitter is refusing to pay its contract for Google Cloud.
No More Google Cloud Services
Speaking of Twitter under the Tesla CEO, Twitter seems to have decided to cut ties with Google Cloud by not paying its due. The company has had a $1 billion contract for the search engine giant's services since 2018, and its renewal date is fast approaching on June 30th.
In its current state, the company might not be able to go through with the contract. But then again, losing Google's services may also cause more problems for the social media platform. Twitter is already trying to reduce the effects of the cutoff.
As reported by Engadget, Twitter is already shifting its services off Google Cloud before the contract's deadline, although they haven't been doing it fast enough as they are "running behind schedule," so users might feel the effects of that soon.
One of the tools used by Twitter, Smyte, has been acquired by the company in 2018 and helps with the platform's moderation. If things go sideways and Twitter does not fully take its services off Google Cloud in time, it might go offline.
Moderation plays an important role in all social media platforms. It prevents users from publishing harmful or insensitive content. As many people know, Twitter has had that problem before in the wake of Elon Musk's "free speech" advocacy.
Top that with the fact that Twitter conducted a large-scale reduction in its workforce, which affected a lot of its departments which also includes moderation. Smyte has already been unstable with Twitter employees saying that it crashes at least once a day for a week.
This isn't even the first time that Twitter refused to pay its due. In late 2022, it didn't pay rent for its California headquarters, resulting in the company getting sued. The company owed millions in rent to the building owner.
Twitter's Losing Battle
If you think that Twitter has been doing well, its current value may tell you otherwise. Since Musk's overpriced purchase of the company, which cost him $44 billion, its value has been plummeting. Twitter's value is now only worth a third of its acquisition value, according to Gizmodo.
Although Musk intends to improve the app and turn it into something worth $250 billion someday, bad decision after bad decision has led to him doing the exact opposite. Mainly, it's the cost-cutting measures that have led to its decline.
As soon as Musk laid off thousands of Twitter employees, the platform's performance started to degrade, as well as its moderation. This caused several big advertisers to leave, which is bad news since advertising is one of the company's main sources of revenue.
Even the efforts of Musk to create new ways to earn have backfired such as Twitter Blue and the new API pricing. The measures have received backlash from users and developers, with some even shifting to alternatives to escape the chaos that is Twitter.
