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Zynga Investment May Herald Google Games
A post at TechCrunch claims knowledge of large investments from Google into social game company Zynga, makers of FarmVille and Mafia Wars. The amount of money involved is not small — somewhere in the $100-200 million range — and could facilitate Google's expansion into the games market. Quoting:
"The investment was made by Google itself, not Google Ventures, say our sources, and it's a highly strategic deal. Zynga will be the cornerstone of a new Google Games to launch later this year, say multiple sources. Not only will Zynga's games give Google Games a solid base of social games to build on, but it will also give Google the beginning of a true social graph as users log into Google to play the games. And I wouldn't be surprised to see PayPal being replaced with Google Checkout as the primary payment option. Zynga is supposedly PayPal's biggest single customer, and Google is always looking for ways to make Google Checkout relevant."
Personally, I'm always looking for ways to make Paypal less relevant.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Maybe they'll release a zynga poker app for android. I've been wanting that for awhile now.
[Google Search] World of Warcraft
Did you mean: World of Googlecraft?
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
This is more likely to herald the entrance of Google into crap, very buggy flash games with unsubtle ways to get children to bug their parents to pay for very expensive pixels to put in their crap flash game.
Evil people are out to get you.
All the stuff that Google is buying and doing sounds eerily familiar to what Yahoo and failed at doing (make an "everything web portal"). Has anyone been able to pull this off and make money?
I know Google is sitting pretty right now, but, as a business person, it's concerning when a company is moving into so many different markets in a few years. Obviously they have some very smart folks there, so maybe it's just me.
-Good luck!
You would all be Heiling the Steve for making the best Apps ever and paying $99.99 a month for it.
With Zyngas past indiscretions I am surprised that Google partnered with them.
Wow, how many experience points did they get for that!
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
Paypal is the biggest ripoff ever to exist .... Insane fee scammers.
I can't wait for the pointless shit games to hit the Android market.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Google should get behind a cutting edge game likeSpyparty. The concept is unique.
I feel sort of out of touch I have no idea who zynga is, did they do something important at any point in time?
This probably sheds some new light into Google's sudden defense of Flash blog post from June 29
http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/06/flash-and-html5-tag.html
Investing in a bunch of Flash games means they have to now start propping up the Flash platform instead of only touting the virtues of HTML5.
Perhaps their intent is to help them port their games to HTML 5 and showcase it. I am not personally one who plays these types of games (ever), but they certainly have huge followings. Getting these to HTML 5, then saying "Gee, I suppose you need an HTML 5 browser. Oh, IE doesn't work? You don't say!" seems to be what I'd say is Google's motivation. With their rabid followers who need to keep their farms healthy and mad cow free (or whatever it is they do), they could really push a LOT of people to HTML 5 browsers like Chrome.
today is spelling optional day.
If my Google account starts showing up in random places like my Facebook used to (back when I still had a Facebook account), and if I ever see a single Farmville style friend request show in my email, I'm dropping my gmail/whatever account and not looking back.
But Paypal is also evil.
I feel the same about this that I felt about the Iraq war and Saddam Hussein.
In Soviet Russia, Google games YOU!
(remember to get those cookie-crunchers and alternate accounts set up ...)
using Google branding.
It would seem that "don't be evil" doesn't include not doing business with the likes of this asshole.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
What a deal, the creators of Farmville and Mafia Wars, two games that would be a better fit for the early 90's.
There are some funny YouTube videos on both of those games.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odBDAcOEKuI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kNjC50BzB0&feature=channel
Tisha Hayes
Me to. Have considered this for a while. Never been comfortable with how much they know about us.
Can anybody recommend a good paid email host?
It's not going to be fun changing all my account's email addresses but could set up a redirection while still changing over. It's not as if I even use the Gmail interface, which is slow.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
or just google acquiring one more source for data mining? (Rhetorical question.)
Fuck zunga. Fuck failbook. Fuck google.
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Could someone explain to me how Farmville is social gaming at all? Tradewars and Geopolitics were real social games from the BBS days. Farmville is just a virus which tries to infect all your friends with its pixel crap.
since advent of cds and industrialization of gaming, games increasingly became brutal capitalism products, purely made to make the maximum profit over them without paying much attention to the gamers' desires. all games, gaming studios either have gone the way of becoming extremely bloated, little gameplay - max visuals, max gore/extremism range, or gone the way of maximum simplicity, minimum effort way. all are done to target the general populations most exploitable characteristics to just make the box sell. rest is not that important. and the studios who were doing real games have either had to go the same way, or got bought by conglomerates and made to choose the same way.
thus some google influence may be good in this sector. we need more gameplay, more fun, entertainment in games.
Read radical news here
They could start by making it available to more than three countries.
BaZynga!
Given the fact that if You install Zynga software in Facebook, you give away Your data and all of Your friends' data, it's quite plausible to say that Zynga has obtained 99.9% of Facebook user data. If Google gets that information via this deal, then 200-300million itself is cheap.
The games are a bonus.
IF they get the information, this is such a cheap deal.
I don't play the games, why would I take offence?
A most excellent question.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Anyone still remember those online games Microsoft make available in earlier web-age?
I really don't like these games would rather play pogo more fun and the games make sense. Plus I can use my tokens anywhere instead of just at one game.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
Spyware, scams and harvesters? I thought you was talking about DoubleClick.
Now, if they can just make FarmVille stop sucking.
It's 'lose', not 'loose'. Otherwise, good post.
How is it that nobody has mentioned that this is just the sort of thing to help launch Google Me? Google needs someone on their social network to bring people over, and as many people as like playing these social games, it won't be that hard to get people onto Google Me from using this.
So between Zynga leaving Facebook but people loving the games and people being upset with Facebook, now's the perfect time for Google to make deals to get people onto their social network.
2^3 * 31 * 647
I think Google has royally fucked up this time. WTF were they thinking handing 200 mil to a bunch of shady developers like them? Idiots.
For Google checkout and google games to be popular, google will have to do something about their customer service. With Paypal you can at least talk to a live person.
http://battlecell.com