Musk has been running around alienating advertisers, not paying bills and firing staff in a desperate attempt to “break even.”  It seems to have worked and the company appears to be approaching “breaking even.” But this is based on the sound business logic that if you don’t pay other people for the services you use, you can make profits for yourself.

However, that was only possible because Musk had Google locked into a contract which kept Twitter afloat and now, according to the Platformer it appears that is coming to an end.

Twitter has refused to pay its Google Cloud bills as its contract comes up for renewal this month, and this will mean that Twitter's trust and safety teams will be crippled.

While Twitter hosts some services on its own servers, the company has long contracted with Google and Amazon to complement its infrastructure. Prior to Musk buying Twitter last year, the company signed a multi-year contract with Google to host services related to fighting spam, removing child sexual abuse material, and protecting accounts, among other things.

Musk might believe that he can get by claiming his outfit is “free speech” but without the Google and Amazon cloud services the entire outfit is going to be serving up automatic spam, porn and Russian propaganda the moment that Musk’s friend that nice Mr Putin hears about it.

Twitter has been trying to renegotiate its contract with Google since at least March but as part of Musk’s business genius, it has delayed payments to Amazon Web Services, leading the company to threaten withholding advertising payments.