Rumors of Google buying micro-blogging site Twitter resurfaced yesterday. A claimed $250 million in cash is on the table, half what Facebook offered last year (although much of that was in stock).

If true, Twitter should hold out for more. Even half a billion looks cheap. Twitter offers a credible double whammy in social networking: It appeals in both personal and business contexts – and is furiously addictive. Indeed, I’d argue that Twitter is becoming more of a business tool than one for friends.

Only this week, Vodafone UK unveiled a new Twitter text service – it’s free for now, but will be charged within subscribers’ text bundles in future. “Twitter is the messaging network you didn’t know you needed until you experience it over SMS,” said Kevin Thau, Twitter’s director of mobile business development in the Telegraph newspaper. How very true, says @cmendler.

Perhaps the rumors are related to the brain drain to Twitter. Douglas Bowman, a senior Google visual designer, recently left to become Twitter’s creative director. Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt also denied plans to acquire Twitter. Speaking on the Charlie Rose show, he preferred to focus on plans to disintermediate traditional broadcasting models. Well, we knew that already.

What Google is now realizing is how quickly it too can be disintermediated as a search medium. Travelling along Twitter’s navigational paths and eddies also enables the type of lateral thinking that Edward de Bono has made famous. Interestingly, he’s claiming that’s also what society needs to get out of the global financial crisis (note to self: How many G20 leaders are Tweeters?)

Yet as tweets insinuate themselves into the fabric of our personal and business lives, things are going wrong. Tweet traffic overload is a frequent and frustrating problem. More horsepower – like Google’s hydro-electric powered datacenters- is just what’s needed.