The interwebs have been abuzz with rumours Google is in "late-stage" talks with Twitter over a possible buy-out of the micro-blogging site, but the original source of the story has already played down the prospect of an early deal.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch "broke" the initial story last night, in which he cited several sources close to the matter.

The site has since published an update admitting that what's really been going on between Mountain View and Twitter apparently involved "acquisition discussions" that "are still [at a] fairly early stage, and the two companies are also considering working together on a Google real time search engine."

Meanwhile, Boomtown's Kara Swisher has been talking to one of her insiders over at the Google ranch who had this to say about the whole hoopla:

“There was a discussion with [Google executive Marissa Mayer's] group about real-time search and about product stuff. It was a couple weeks ago. It was very preliminary…and that was that.”

Another anonymous source told Swisher that no takeover talks had been initiated whatsoever, despite Arrington's second-chance-at-keeping-the-story-alive assertion that the two companies were at an "early stage" of acquisition chatter.

“Seriously, no negotiations, no deal, nada,” said the source.

Many analysts and commentators in the past few months have dribbled over the prospect that Google might buy the revenue-shy Twitter outfit, which claims around seven million navel gazers worldwide.

But it hasn't happened yet, despite all the speculation. ®

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