According to LinkedIn, 87 of the 641 people who say they currently work at Twitter were formerly employed by Google. (Twitter said this week that it has 600 employees, so that number’s a bit off, but probably in the general neighborhood.)

Early Google employees don’t get as much credit as those of, say, PayPal, for founding and funding a new generation of start-ups. But former Googlers seem to have made a practice of infiltrating promising new tech companies as they look for the next big thing.

At one point last year, it was noted that 200 former Googlers worked at Facebook, making up 12.5 percent of its staff at the time, including top executives like Sheryl Sandberg and many of the product people Facebook brought in through acquisitions.

Something similar seems to be happening at Twitter, though it’s still much smaller. CEO Dick Costolo was with Google after it acquired his start-up FeedBurner (but some say that means he’s not truly born-and-bred Google). Co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone (both no longer in operational roles) were also formerly at Google, though again, Williams came in through an acquisition (of his Pyra Labs, which made Blogger).

The Google influence seems especially prevalent on Twitter’s product team. Satya Patel, who is director of product management, was formerly a well-respected Googler, and nearly every Twitter product manager seems to have had some history at the Plex — save for the four who were recently let go.

Twitter creative director Doug Bowman came from Google (in fact, he left in a huff), as did general counsel Alex Macgillivray and VP Katie Jacobs Stanton, who leads international strategy.

Glenn Otis Brown, Twitter’s newly added director of business development for media, was formerly products counsel at Google and head of music partnerships at YouTube.

Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner, who herself came to Twitter from Google, said she could not provide any specific numbers about how many of her coworkers matched that description.

A Twitter insider said that Twitter’s Googliness is less apparent than Facebook’s, because fewer members of the core leadership team came from Google. Even if head honcho Costolo did stop through Mountain View en route to hipper San Francisco, execs Jack Dorsey (executive chairman in charge of product), Adam Bain (revenue), Ali Rowghani (CFO) and Michael Abbott (engineering) did not work at Google.

Google isn’t entirely happy to be spawning other people’s workforces. The company has famously paid dearly to keep its top employees from departing to take roles at Facebook, and more recently, Twitter. Twitter and Google have been partners in the past, but more recently have had testy relations over renegotiating a data distribution deal.

Thomas Korte, the ringleader of start-up incubator AngelPad and an early Googler, noted in a recent conversation that following former Googlers’ successful infiltration of Twitter, Square and Foursquare seem likely to be the next ex-Googler targets.

Korte pointed out that Foursquare recently hired the well-connected and respected former Googlers Morgan Missen and Benjy Weinberger (both actually worked at Twitter en route!) and Square recently appointed former Googler Megan Quinn as its director of products.

Besides the beginnings of strong referral networks, Korte added, these up-and-coming companies have one other thing going for them: “They’re the only ones that can cough up the salaries to match Google,” he said.

Goldman offered the news in a conversation at LeWeb, saying he’d maintain an advisory role, that he’s not leaving to start something new, that he’s not going to Facebook or Google and that he just needs “a bit of a break.”

Twitter has no lack of product leaders, including co-founder and former CEO Evan Williams, who recently relinquished the top job to make room for former COO Dick Costolo. Goldman had been a close friend of Williams, having first joined him as business manager of blogging software maker Pyra Labs, before it was bought by Google in 2003. Goldman has led product at Twitter since 2007.

Following Goldman’s departure announcement, a company spokeswoman said that Williams “is going to continue in his co-founder role and help with product vision.” She said that it was not yet clear whether the new head of product management would be an internal or external hire.

But, no surprise, sources familiar with the situation said Williams will likely assume the top product role, as it’s the best-fitting landing place for him at the company. The Twitter service was originally created in 2006 by company co-founder and Chairman Jack Dorsey and others when Williams was CEO of a previous start-up called Odeo. Dorsey left his operating role at Twitter in 2008 when Williams replaced him as CEO.

As the company verges on raising funding that would value the company at $3.5 to $4 billion, the departure of Goldman seems to underscore an issue that has plagued Twitter for a long time: Product development.

Aside from its well-documented reliability problems, new products and major upgrades at Twitter are few and far between.

While it is clear the people who founded and now lead Twitter have been passionate and visionary about personal expression and information-sharing in its simplest form, many techies say they are given pause by Twitter’s deficit of innovation since its first and most powerful iteration.

They assert that Twitter’s product launches to date–retweets, lists, some apps and its #newtwitter Web interface–are minor complements to the simple messaging system. In a tech culture that values shiny new toys, multiple people have said to me that Twitter is the least innovative of any other Internet contemporary.

For example, Twitter still doesn’t offer image hosting or its own link shortener, and still has yet to fully incorporate the search service Summize, which it bought in 2008. Perhaps that’s out of concern for displacing and angering its developer corps of companies, like Bit.ly, but since 25 percent of Tweets contain links, it seems obvious that Twitter should help its users shorten them to help fit into its 140-character limit.

The company tried to set a firm road map last April at Chirp, its first developer conference (pictured at left, the dudes of Twitter held a jokey Q&A session at Chirp).

But since then, eagerly awaited products like “Annotations” (a way to add more information to Tweets) have been delayed as the company concentrated on dealing with World Cup traffic and the release of its new Web site. Twitter is hiring as fast as it can, with its ballooning employee count, now at 325, relatively small for a product now used by eight percent of American online adults.

Still, many laud the sleek new Twitter Web site–for which Goldman, Williams and product manager Kevin Cheng led development. It was rolled out to admirable acclaim and user satisfaction.

But Twitter has only a few weeks to shuffle things around before it launches into the new year with no formal leader of its product team.

Some interviews will be quite serious (Eve Ensler, talking about the dire situation in the Congo) and some possibly funny (Mark Cuban, who simply defies definition).

But this picture that Twitter founder and CEO Evan Williams posted today on his Flickr page is easily the most unusual bit of research I have come across.

Here it is, aptly titled, “This doesn’t seem awkward at all”:

Taken at Time magazine’s Time 100 fete in New York recently, where the pair were among this year’s honorees, Williams and fellow Twitter founder Biz Stone were looking, well, I could not say at first just what the microblogging potentates were looking like.

That is, until I compared the photo with the one below of Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller, who played supermodels Hansel and Derek in the nearly perfect movie, “Zoolander.”

Is it the “Blue Steel” pose?

How lucky that All Things Digital readers can see the pair strut their stuff onstage in real-time (how Twittery of us!), starting next Tuesday night in posts and videos, in the opening night interview Walt Mossberg and I will conduct with Williams and Stone.

In their honor we’ve already tweeted–in fewer than 140 characters each–their bios thusly for our program–I hope they appreciate our editorial license with their short and sweet lives:

Williams was raised on a farm in Nebraska, dropped out of college, was co-founder of Pyra Labs, which created Blogger and sold to Google.

Stone helped found things besides Twitter: Xanga, Blogger and Odeo. He worked for Google with Blogger. He once won a debate at Oxford Union.

You can also see the rest of the D7 speaker list and click to more bios here.

[Photo of Williams and Stone courtesy of Evan Williams on Flickr.]

[Updated with new details about deal, including who worked on it and info on a cash component.]

About three weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter ended several weeks of serious talks, in which Facebook was offering to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock, which also included a cash component.

While rumors of Facebook’s interest were brought up in an interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the Web 2.0 Summit a few weeks ago, some shot down the idea as silly.

Quite incorrectly, as it turns out, since top execs at both Facebook and Twitter were right then at the tail end of discussions, which were initiated by the privately held Facebook in mid-October, about bringing the two together.

Those talks, sources on both sides said, are now over.

So why did the deal break down?

Well, as is usually the case, over price–was $500 million worth of Facebook stock actually worth $500 million?–and the typical concerns about integration and costs.

But, more important, it seems, was a feeling among Twitter investors and execs that the start-up should still take a shot at building its revenues–there are none right now–as well as it had done at building its growth.

“It’s more about timing,” said one person familiar with Twitter’s motivations. “There is a strong feeling that there is still an opportunity–even with the economic downturn–to blow this thing out.”

Still, combining the world’s fastest-growing social-networking site with what is quickly becoming the best-known microblogging service is actually a natural fit.

That’s especially true given that Facebook–for all its powerful online social connections–has seen Twitter race past it in innovating in the “status update” arena.

While some sources at Facebook said Zuckerberg was becoming frustrated by the buzz Twitter was getting–a market that should have been dominated by Facebook–others at the company said he was interested in buying Twitter because of his respect for its progress.

Indeed, at the Web 2.0 interview, Zuckerberg called Twitter an “elegant model” and said that he was “really impressed by what they’ve done.”

Indeed, with about six million registrations, as reported in October, up 600 percent over the last year, the San Francisco-based Twitter–launched in 2006–has had impressive growth.

(It has also been plagued by technical issues, which are–to be fair–decreasing.)

In any case, for those not familiar with it, the premise of Twitter is dead simple: A registered user logs in via the Internet or a mobile phone and answers the “What are you doing?” question the service asks in only 140 characters or fewer.

It’s quite a clever idea, although–so far–not a money-making one.

To try to goose that, Twitter’s board replaced the engineer who created Twitter, Jack Dorsey, with another founder, Evan Williams, who had served as its chairman and chief product officer.

The more experienced Williams (pictured here) had already built one company–Pyra Labs, which created the Blogger blogging service–that he sold to Google in 2003. He also started the audio and video search site Odeo, where Twitter was actually born.

Still, its investors have not come down on Twitter to hold back its growth efforts, and have handed over $20 million to the start-up so far. In its last round, Twitter was valued at $98 million.

Its funders include: Union Square Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Digital Garage, Spark Capital and Bezos Expeditions, backed by Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

In addition, well-known Silicon Valley figures, such as Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway, have also invested. Interestingly, Andreessen is also on Facebook’s board.

Other private investors include FeedBurner Co-Founder (and now Googler) Dick Costolo, former Epinions Co-Founder Naval Ravikant and former Googler Chris Sacca.

Twitter needs all the investors it can get, since it has no revenue, although it has been exploring things like charging business customers and adding advertising into the consumer service.

Lack of revenues was an issue for Facebook, said sources, especially related to fees Twitter pays for delivery of its messages to cellphones.

While the issue has been manageable in the U.S., Twitter cut off its SMS support in some international markets this summer because of too-high costs.

But, if Twitter was offered to Facebook’s 120 million users, Facebook execs estimated that it might have to deal with huge SMS fees–up to $75 million annually.

“Facebook has its own revenue-generating challenges,” said one person close to the company. “As much as Twitter would give them a lift in the status area, it was still a worry.”

Not enough, said several sources, to stop Facebook from making another approach at some point in the future. “We’d hate to see Twitter go to another company,” said one source.

Indeed, while all are even more price-conscious than Facebook, large companies that could also be interested include: Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT) or a large telecom company, such as Verizon (VZ).

If it had completed the deal to buy Twitter, it would have been Facebook’s most significant acquisition by far.

Zuckerberg and Williams did meet and get along well, but the deal was primarily negotiated by Spark Capital partner Bijan Sabet (Spark is a Twitter investor) and Facebook deal guy Dan Rose.

But in this time, at least, the Twitter side was still not interested in selling at the price Facebook had offered.

The $500 million offered was in an all-stock form, said sources on both sides, at the $15 billion valuation that came from the Microsoft’s investment in the company last October.

The Twitter side felt that figure was inflated and the shares should be valued at the lower figures that have also been reported for Facebook’s true valuation, more in the $5 billion range.

That would have given the deal a $150 million price tag, which was seen as too low, especially since it was in Facebook stock and not cash initially.

In fact, Twitter wanted cash, which some sources say was offered by Facebook in the $50 to $100 million range, in addition to stock, but taking too much stock was still a major issue.

There are other ways the pair could have approximated a safer choice for Twitter, via warrants, of course, or other methods.

But, said several sources close to Twitter, the primary reason for not selling was because its board simply did not want to yet or perhaps ever.

Said one source: “The question is, is it really a good idea to sell on the first chance you get?”

Well, for Twitter, we’ll just have to wait and see about that, of course.

[Photo of Evan Williams by Joi Ito. Licensed under Creative Commons 2.0 By-Attribution license.]