Is Google (NSDQ: GOOG) close to agreeing to some kind of deal with Twitter? Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking at the company’s annual Zeitgeist confernce in London this week, tried to put a lid on suggestions that the Big G was planning to buy Twitter outright. He told reporters after the event’s last session on Tuesday (via Telegraph.co.uk): “We don’t have to buy everyone to work with them.” Schmidt said in April that the company would be “happy” to work with Twitter. Guardian.co.uk has more from the session.

Those who believe a deal is possible say Google would benefit from Twitter’s real-time search capability, and Google co-founder Larry Page admitted in a separate panel at Zeitgeist that the search giant had “done a relatively poor job of creating things that work on a per-second basis.” But Page added: “We will do a good job of things now we have these examples,” suggesting that Google could benefit from perhaps an increased partnership with Twitter or just learning from its still-growing appetite for its indexed and searchable second-by-second updates.