They were unpopular with many, the idea was that a PE firm would buy the company with debt and then sell off parts and make other parts more efficient to service the debt. But underneath that was the idea that companies at the time were not using their assets efficiently, and it was possible to essentially use that efficiency to buy the company.
Tldr, I wonder if we're reaching that phase with big tech, where companies are sl inefficiency that they are ripe for the plucking by buying them off and cutting staff (the new versions of an asset) and streamlining operations.
Twitter is maybe an edge case, but it's plausible. I wouldn't be surprised to find that 90% of Google's recurring revenue comes from < 10% of their operations, and that an efficiency focused operator could capture most of their profit at a significantly lower headcount. Maybe this is the start of something