Google’s failed foray into the world of social media has paved the way for the tech conglomerate to think about buying Twitter.

The San Francisco-based Google recently announced a raft of changes to it’s flagship social media offering, Google+, which experts interpret as a retreat from backing the Facebook-style platform. 

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The search engine poured millions of dollars and hours of energy into Google+, ultimately to never make a significant impact on the social media landscape.

The timing is right too, as Twitter’s share price comes under heavy pressure upon the departure of its CEO and poor user growth.

Those events have prompted a senior writer at Fortune to write that it’s looking ever more likely Google could buy micro-messaging service, Twitter.

The report details how Google initially use real-time data from the world’s millions of Twitter feeds to sharpen its search algorithms.

That deal ultimately fell through due to disagreements between the pair, and because Google wanted to generate it’s own social feed with Google+.

Google now need to pay Twitter for such data, but the Fortune article suggests Google might just buy the whole of Twitter for unlimited access.

It’s also reported that over the years, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and even Facebook have expressed interest in purchasing Twitter.