This is the worst thing that could happen to twitter. Google's brand doesn't have quite the same cachè it used to. Today, it means being bought with no improvements to the service for at least a year after that. Look at Grand Central and Jaiku as examples.
Ok, spelling/grammar nazi time. The accent over cache would be only slightly pretentious if you didn't have it pointing the wrong way (caché is the slightly archaic spelling you're struggling to remember). But the fact that the word you're looking for is "cachet" makes it a double fail.
I don't see how pointing out poor english is pretentious. Especially when it's not a case of someone speaking it as their second language, but someone trying to put on airs and getting it wrong.
So glad you could take the time to correct me. Just made my day. So yeah, I forgot "cachet" as an alternative spelling and was typing the comment from my phone. So you're the $10/hr Digg guy? Still sore about that?
They wouldn't have to brand it as Google. Think: Yahoo buying Flickr.
I also could imagine some pretty terrible things happening to Twitter... like, for example, the site displaying "FUCK OFF" on every page load, forever.
Yahoo! couldn't resist fucking with Flickr, though. Or delicious. Think about the damn tying it to freakin Yahoo! accounts, which look like they're out of the stone age, and the "you have to log in every 2 weeks to save a bookmark" feature they added to delicious, etc., etc. etc.
If people fuck with Twitter like that, it'll be gone. Service instability is one thing. Adding so much friction is another.
Not being a Flickr or Delicious user myself, other than created an account to try it out, I don't know all the end-user effects of the Yahoo acquisitions. But it seems like Flickr and Delicious have turned out alright!