So if I get this right, Google and Microsoft decided that they cannot datamine (strip-mine ?) Twitter by themselves, and that they need Twitter's collaboration.

So if I get this right, Google and Microsoft decided that they cannot datamine (strip-mine ?) Twitter by themselves, and that they need Twitter's collaboration. I guess Twitter would refuse firehose access to someone surreptitiously applying for access from "Google Inc.", but also that Twitter cannot be spidered like any other website, with its huge, unseen until recently, rate of updates. Maybe Google could have spidered all the data they needed after all, but decided to play nice to build trust and to build the "ecosystem".