Eric Schmidt, the Google CEO, signed up to Twitter this morning – leading to speculation over a tie-up between the two tech firms. TechCrunch reported Schmidt’s account after some Googlers welcomed him on Twitter.

With a press conference at Google HQ due for later today, Schmidt’s entry into the Twitter fray has raised the prospect of the search engine giant and the micro-blogging site joining forces.

His first tweets – as @eschmidt0 – are not about what he is doing right now, but what he is thinking of, and that is his own performance.

So his first Twitter step was a bit of self-promotion, a link to his Wall Street piece “How Google Can Help Newspapers” and an attempted link to CNN’s GPS with Fareed Zakaria – but unfortunately CNN has removed the link (in case you are interested, you find the show here).

If this is his real account let’s hope that we get a more direct glimpse of what Schmidt is about in the near future as his activity on Twitter would definitely interesting to watch.

However, the move is a bit of a surprise, because in spring, his opinion about the micro-messaging system wasn’t so good: “Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of a poor man’s email systems”, he said.

@eschmidt0 already has more than 2,000 followers and is following 73 Twitter accounts – a mixture of showbiz, politics and news organisations. Of course eschmidt0 is following the Google account, too, and Marissa Mayer – the company’s vice-president of search product – who hasn’t sent a single tweet.

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