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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.
There are two types of people in the world: people who think there are two types of people in the world and people who don’t. I’m among the first type and I think the world is divided into people who recognize the Jewish problem and people who don’t.
In other words, the world is divided into smart people and dumb people. If you’ve got an IQ of 80, have difficulty operating a can-opener, and recognize the Jewish problem, you’re smart. If you’ve got an IQ of 180, have already won a couple of Nobel Prizes, and don’t recognize the Jewish problem, you’re dumb.
I’ve been dumb for most of my life: it took me a long time to recognize the Jewish problem. I didn’t think for myself, I just accepted the propaganda and conformed to the consensus. Jews are good people. Only bad people criticize Jews. Jews good. Anti-Semites bad. But then, very slowly, I started to see the light.
Recognizing Jewish hypocrisy was the first big step. I was reading an article by someone called Rabbi Julia Neuberger, a prominent British liberal. I didn’t like liberals then, so I didn’t like her for that (and because her voice and manner had always grated on me), but her Jewishness wasn’t something I particularly noticed. But as I read the article I came across something that didn’t strike me as very liberal: she expressed concern about Jews marrying Gentiles, because this threatened the survival of the Jewish people.
That made me sit up and think. Hold on, I thought, I know this woman sits on all sorts of “multi-cultural” committees and is constantly being invited onto TV and radio to yap about the joys of diversity and the evils of racism. She’s all in favor of mass immigration and there’s no way she’s worried about Whites marrying non-Whites, because “Race is Just a Social Construct” and “We’re All the Same Under the Skin”. She’s a liberal and she thinks that race-mixing is good and healthy and Holy. Yet this same woman is worried about Jews marrying Gentiles. Small contradiction there, n'est ce-pas?
Well, no. Big contradiction. She obviously didn’t apply the same rules to everyone else as she applied to her own people, the Jews. She was, in short, a hypocrite. But not just that – she was a Jewish hypocrite. And that’s a big step for a brainwashed White to take: not just thinking in a negative way about a Jew, but thinking in a negative way about a Jew because of her Jewishness.
After that, I slowly started to see the world in a different way. Or to be more precise: I started to see the world. I started to see what had always been there: the massive over-representation of Jews in politics and the media. And I started to notice that a lot of those Jews – like Rabbi Julia Neuberger, in fact – gave me the creeps. There was something slimy and oily and flesh-crawling about them. And it wasn’t just me, either: other Gentiles seemed to feel it too.
Politicians often attract nicknames based on some outstanding aspect of their character or behavior. Margaret Thatcher was “The Iron Lady”. Ronald Reagan was “Teflon Ron”. Bill Clinton was “Slick Willy”. But these are Gentile politicians and their nicknames are at least half-affectionate. Jewish politicians seem to attract a different kind of nickname. In Britain, Gerald Kaufman, bald, homosexual Member of Parliament for Manchester Gorton, is nicknamed “Hannibal Lecter”. Peter Mandelson, now Britain’s Euro-Commissioner and Tony Blair’s suspected former lover, is “The Prince of Darkness”. Michael Howard (né Hecht), the leader of the British Conservative Party, is “Dracula”.
When I noticed this kind of thing, I started to ask questions. What was going on here? Why did Jews attract nicknames like that? And why had Gentiles reacted to them like that not just now, but a long way into the past? Shakesp
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.
UP TODAY! IF YOU would choose to use
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