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."

Comments

Relevant.

[ScrewMaster]

Personally, I'm always looking for ways to make Paypal less relevant.

Re:Relevant.

[SquarePixel]

Personally, I'm always looking for ways to make Paypal less relevant.

The funny thing is, PayPal is mostly just relevant in the US and other western countries. Other countries have better online systems with full encyption, added security and several ways to use their system, and people happily use these to pay their phone and tv bills and everything else. You can also top up your account by buying one of the several coupons from the kiosk near you.

It's actually quite funny how US people put up with PayPal and their shitty and insecure system.

Re:Relevant.

[macraig]

Right now some of us in California are looking for ways to make Meg Whitman less relevant.

I can see it now...

[DWMorse]

[Google Search] World of Warcraft

Did you mean: World of Googlecraft?

Crap Flash Games

[TechyImmigrant]

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.

Re:Crap Flash Games

[Zerth]

I'm rather surprised Google would invest in Zynga, considering their reputation for working with spyware, scam deal sites, personal information harvesters, and other things that Google would warn you about if you clicked on them in Chrome.

Not that it matters much, but this actually tarnishes my opinion of Google a bit.

Re:Crap Flash Games

[tomhudson]

The terms of use are also very slimy

You waive your right to sue, to join others in a class action or other collective lawsuit, to filing an injunction,

Their privacy policy also sucks - remember how facebook leaks your personal data - zynga admits it:

. We may offer you the opportunity to submit other information about yourself (such as gender, age, occupation, hobbies, interests, zip code, etc.), or we may be able to collect that information from social networking systems on which you have used Zynga Games or SNS Apps ...

We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, Zynga games and other users of Zynga, to supplement your profile.

Yes, zynga is a spyware business.

$200 million?

[mr_lizard13]

Wow, how many experience points did they get for that!

Time to lose my Google account.

[Sowelu]

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.