June 12, 2023
Twitter is refusing to pay its Google Cloud expenses as the company’s contract with Google is set to expire this month.
The deal, which was inked before Musk took ownership of Twitter, was primarily concerned with eliminating spam and protecting user accounts. Twitter has been renegotiating the contract conditions since March, following a prior disagreement with Amazon over overdue invoices for cloud computing services, which resulted in withholding advertising revenue.
Following Musk’s arrival, Twitter implemented a number of cost-cutting initiatives, including layoffs and reductions in infrastructure expenditures. Musk authorized the firm to cut $1 billion from its infrastructure budget, which included a drop in expenditure on cloud services, in order to save costs. This caused Twitter to launch contract renegotiations with Google, while also earlier postponing payments to Amazon Web Services, putting the company at risk of losing advertising revenue.
The reasons behind Twitter’s failure to pay its Google Cloud costs are unclear. It’s also unclear whether this rejection extends to Amazon Web Services or is purely motivated by Musk’s cost-cutting measures.
The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.
