I can think of a couple of reasons: i) Better integration of realtime search results. ii) A social network that's already established. Google wants a social ne

I can think of a couple of reasons: i) Better integration of realtime search results. ii) A social network that's already established. Google wants a social network, but has failed spectacularly to create their own. I agree it's probably complete nonsense though. But weirder things have happened. Apple bought Topsy, a Twitter analytics company, and shut that down, presumably for the data.