Twitter has been trying to renegotiate its contract with Google since at least March
Published Date – 02:15 PM, 23rd, Sunday – 6/11/23
San Francisco: Twitter, run by Elon Musk, is reportedly refusing to pay its Google Cloud bill because its contract is due to be renewed this month.
According to a Platformer report, unless Twitter pays or fixes the problem, “its access could be cut off at the end of the contract on June 30.”
Before Musk bought the Weibo platform for $44 billion last October, the company signed a multiyear contract with Google to host services related to fighting spam, removing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and protecting accounts.
If Twitter fails to pay Google Cloud, its trust and safety team could be paralyzed.
Twitter has been trying to renegotiate its contract with Google since at least March.
“It also delayed payments to Amazon Web Services (AWS), leading the company to threaten to stop paying advertising fees,” the report states.
Smyte, a company Twitter acquired in 2018 that provides tools to stop abuse and harassment, is one of the services currently running on Google Cloud Platform.
“It is now scheduled to shut down on June 30, sources say. If Smyte goes down, it could reduce Twitter’s ability to meet two of Musk’s stated priorities: removing CSAM and bots,” Platformer executive editor Zoe Schiffer tweeted on Sunday Wen said.
In March, Platformer first cited people familiar with the matter as saying that colleagues in Twitter’s sales and marketing staff told them that “Amazon had threatened to stop paying for the ads it ran on Twitter because the social network had refused to pay Amazon for months. Payment Fee. Network Service Bill for Cloud Computing Services”.
