Google Shake Up: Jaiku Sidelined, Moving On Twitter?

Looks like Google orchestrated a major product line shakeup, and announced on a newsday when everyone might be looking the other way, with Carol Bartz taking the helm at Yahoo and Steve Jobs taking an ‘extended leave of absence’ at Apple.

Most interesting to me are the deadpooling of Dodgeball (I guess we all expected that after the founders quit and spit on Google as they walked out), the weird zombie status of Google Notebook (it’s not dead, but no new signups?), and the transition of Twitter competitor Jaiku into open source (so anyone can roll their own microstreaming service… except Google?).

The last odd move raises questions about Google’s aspirations for Twitter:

[from Google Ends Google Video Uploads, Shutters Notebook, Catalog Search, Dodgeball & Jaiku by Danny Sullivan]

Twitter competitor Pownce closed earlier last month. Facebook was reportedly interested in buying Twitter, but the company wasn’t interested in selling at that time, it was said. That probably leaves FriendFeed (founded by four former Googlers) as the closest Twitter competitor out there, though arguably it depends on Twitter itself for much of its oomph. It’ll be interesting to see if Google decides it’s interested in Twitter, given the Facebook interest — perhaps shuttering Jaiku is indicative of something more to come. Pure speculation here, of course. Twitter was cofounded by former Googler Evan Williams.

This suggests to me that Google is *very* interested in acquiring Twitter, and I bet discussions are happening already.