There are two schools of thought about Twitter’s decision not to sell itself to Facebook, as it did not in the fail-whale of a deal that BoomTown reported on yesterday.

Here’s my favorite quote from an Internet exec who thought the microblogging service’s decision to turn down $500 million in stock (and some cash) in the hot social-networking site was–how can I put this delicately?–stupid:

“If Twitter turned down 500m in stock, they should go see a shrink.”

But, others disagreed, with another big Web player noting: “Why should Twitter hitch itself to Facebook’s horse, when they don’t have to?”

Debate raged, depending on your point of view, with change-averse Twitter users mostly seeming relieved.

I am more toward the middle of the road, not knowing–who really does?–what was the best move. Thus, I would agree with a sentiment in an email sent to me yesterday from yet another digital guru:

“I think strategic buyers are going to be considered as options for all venture backed companies going forward. Additional rounds of financing are not the given they have been in the past few years. Liquidity is at a premium I’ve never seen before.”

Yes, indeed, as in all things, it always comes down to money and means and time.

In other words, Twitter has made the big bet that it has plenty of all of it, to transform itself into a real business and killer app before others catch up to it.

Right now, its business is deadly 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.

But that single feature has allowed the San Francisco-based Twitter to grow to about six million registrations, as reported in October, up 600 percent over the last year.

And that’s why Facebook–for all its powerful online social connections–has watched carefully as Twitter has raced past it in innovating in the “status update” arena.

And that is also why Facebook wanted to acquire it, to be able to check that important feature off its list, so it could move onto other issues (like finding an advertising model that pays off big).

According to many I spoke to about the now-ended discussions between Twitter and Facebook, both sides got along well, felt the fit was a manageable one and the union of the two made sense on many levels–and still does.

But, for Twitter, the chance to make a run for the prize was paramount, with a feeling among its 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.

As for Facebook, it apparently plans to keep the pedal to the metal too, in terms of growth and acquisitions–powering through these bad times economically, in order to emerge victorious when the tides turn.

In a prescient piece last week, in fact, BusinessWeek’s Spencer Ante outlined the Facebook do-or-die strategy.

Wrote Ante:

“As gloom descends on Silicon Valley, most startups and giants are growing cautious and cutting back. But not Facebook. The social-networking Web site sees a bleak economy as all the more reason to press ahead with aggressive plans for growth. ‘This is not the time for tech companies to be cutting back; this is the time to be hitting the accelerator,’ says Peter Thiel, a Facebook board member and investor.”

Of course, this was the very same Peter Thiel, who told me in a video interview a year ago that “there was absolutely no bubble in technology.”

Well, with tech valuations now in the basement (as well as Thiel’s own hedge fund returns) from peaks last year, he’s right–that bubble has surely been popped.

As I said before, you just never know, a kind of equivocation that Hamlet spoke about so eloquently in his famous soliloquy in Act Three, Scene One, of William Shakespeare’s classic play.

It’s in text and video below–the Laurence Oliver version, of course!–because we all could use a little more insight than 140 characters or a post on a digital wall gives to any of us these days:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Yesterday, BoomTown took a rather strong stand against Google and its recent aggressive efforts to defend its outsourcing deal to sell some of Yahoo’s search advertising.

Given that the pair have a more than 80 percent combined market share in the search business, I and many others–advertisers, publishers and state and federal regulators–are a bit nervous about further concentration of market power in one set of hands, even if they are such Googley hands.

But in the interest of fairness and because I like to argue with myself–combined with some insights from some smart people I have kibitzed with on the issue–here is a counterpoint with three key reasons why Google and Yahoo might hold firm in launching the partnership, which sources said is likely to start on Oct. 9.

1.) The Justice Department is not actually serious about taking on Google.

While it is true that the government has hired seasoned litigator Sandy Litvack–the former antitrust chief in the Jimmy Carter administration–to consider whether it has a case against the controversial partnership, the move by the DOJ’s antitrust unit might be more political coverage than anything else.

Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Thomas Barnett (pictured here), who will likely be leaving that post after the November election, has not been much of a trustbuster, to say the least, taking a mostly hands-off attitude toward business regulation.

Thus, he might be making the move to placate intense lobbying by Microsoft (MSFT) and to look like the DOJ’s antitrust unit can act.

Interestingly, Barnett had, according to a New York Times piece last year, “urged state prosecutors to reject a confidential antitrust complaint filed by Google that is tied to a consent decree that monitors Microsoft’s behavior. Google has accused Microsoft of designing its latest operating system, Vista, to discourage the use of Google’s desktop search program.”

And even more interesting, Barnett previously worked for a law firm that repped Microsoft on antitrust issues (although Barnett did not work on Microsoft cases).

2.) The Justice Department will lose if it decides to make a case against Google.

Let’s be clear–Google (GOOG) has done nothing wrong yet, because the Yahoo deal has not yet begun.

Well, except that it has been scarily successful in its primary business of search.

Google has argued that such success is no crime and that the deal would have strong user benefits.

The company has also argued that working with Yahoo (YHOO) will not raise online ad prices, part of Google’s basic argument that its auction-style business model where advertisers set the price makes that impossible.

But what its critics are essentially asserting is that, because of its dominance, Google should simply not be allowed to strike a partnership with the second largest player, Yahoo.

Fears include that rise in online ad prices, a Google control over the market that would make it impossible for others to compete and an increased ability to dictate terms to customers.

But, Google argues, that’s all speculative and unknowable until the partnership with Yahoo launches.

Thus, there’s not a whole lot for the Justice Department to hang a case on, in contrast to its case against Microsoft, which landed in court because of bullying behavior that actually took place before the case was waged.

So why should Google run away, when there is no tangible proof of abuse?

Better still, if the DOJ did take Google on and Google won, the Justice Department would be hard-pressed to come at Google again for a good long time.

3.) If Google caves and walks away, it damages Yahoo and makes for a bad precedent.

It is not likely that Google wants to make an enemy of Yahoo, because even in its weakened state, Yahoo is a better to have as a friend than as a foe.

And taking away an expected $800 million Yahoo estimates it will make in added revenue on the deal is not any way to treat a friend.

In addition, one could argue that walking away now is premature. As Google’s power grows, there will never be a better chance for it to win its arguments.

And if Google gives in to DOJ pressure now, essentially admitting it is too powerful, it might have to concede one thing after the next in the future–from distribution deals to acquisitions to whatever it might try to do.

Finally, while I still believe Google should not be in business with Yahoo, I think it is indeed going to stick to its typically stubborn guns, launch on Oct. 9 and then make tweaks that regulators might request based on how the partnership goes.

But, in order to do that most smoothly, it might be a good idea for Google execs to stop making so much noise defending themselves and to resist the urge to attack Microsoft so loudly.

It might even take a clue from the unusually quiet Yahoo, from whom not a peep has been heard on the issue.

Google could do with some of that self-control.

Because that famous line from “Hamlet” certainly applies: The search giant doth protest too much, methinks.

(By the way, besides a press conference by CEO Eric Schmidt this week on the Yahoogle deal, here are two Google posts defending the deal on its public policy blog. One is by Google Chief Economist Hal Varian and another by U.S. ad head Tim Armstrong.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.