- The Washington Times - Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Twitter has stopped paying for Google Cloud services as its contract with the company nears expiration.

The contract between Twitter and Google, which was signed before Elon Musk took over the company last October and details how Twitter will use and pay for Google Cloud, is set to expire this month.

Twitter has been reportedly trying to renegotiate the terms of the contract since March.

While Twitter hosts a number of its own services on its servers, some of them are housed on cloud servers owned by Amazon and Google.

If Google prohibited Twitter from using its cloud services, it could devastate the trust and safety trams at the company. Many of the provisions in the contract make it easier for Twitter to handle scams and bot accounts on the platform.

Twitter has also apparently not paid its bills to Amazon either. In March, Amazon said it would withhold advertising payments until the company settled unpaid bills for cloud services.

The news that Twitter is failing to pay its bills is not new. Since Mr. Musk took over the company, he has overseen a concerted effort to cut costs, and sometimes that means not paying. There have been several reports that Twitter is refusing to pay rent in some of its office buildings, resulting in litigation.

Mr. Musk also said he needed the company to cut at least $1 billion in cloud funding.

• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.

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