Google Eyeballing Games

An anonymous reader tips news of a Google job listing indicating the company's interest in building a gaming division. "The broad job posting requires someone to lead the new venture from designing the user experience, working on partnerships with developers and working with the gaming community." According to the posting, they are "looking for a strategic, technical and game-loving Product Manager to drive Google's gaming strategy. You will design strategies for game distribution and discovery, player identity, game mechanics, and more."

Comments

Pick me!

[Mitsoid]

Gaming company + Google = sign me up... Though I'd never get in :-(

Re:Pick me!

[mlush]

You'll be fine just remember in the interview when Google when they ask "Are you Evil?" don't answer yes

Re:Pick me!

[nschubach]

I replied "Chaotic Evil mostly."

I guess that's why they never called me back.

Re:Pick me!

[Hazel Bergeron]

Google today are Microsoft tomorrow. If you have some good ideas, get to work on them yourself. It's more challenging but your work won't be subsumed by a corporate vision which in Google's case comes down to making a lot of money for shareholders by selling targeted ad space. And remember that the pursuit of happiness involves a journey, not a destination.

There's street cred but no great progress being a grunt in the cool gang. You're passionate: let it carry you.

Street view

[MichaelSmith]

Google street view would make a great MMO, particularly with augumented reality through android phones.

Re:Street view

[alostpacket]

Only on Slashdot can I read a comment like that and think, "yeah, that's a pretty cool idea!" While simultaneously thinking, "holy crap we all need to get outside and interact with real people more often."

Re:What are the odds?

[pinkushun]

Offline web applications is part of the HTML5 specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/offline.html

GGT

[pinkushun]

My Predictions:
- a Google Gaming Toolkit for making games on their platform.
- host your games on their infrastructure just like they do with Google App Engine.
- social networking built into games linked via Buzz, Wave, and your Google account.
- Profit!

Not Surprised

[tbannist]

I don't find this at all surprising. With the growing convergence between consoles, portable gamin, and cell phones it seems inevitable that Google will have to get in on the action. I'm not sure where they're going to go from this, but I could easily see a Google console eventually. It could be used to drive GoogleTV adoption and could be a hub for gaming on Android devices, thus working to promote Android as well . They are also likely to be looking at first party games for Android as killer apps to drive market share.

It's a pretty obvious next step, really. I don't know if it will succeed, games and game consoles are a very different business, and unless they are looking at producing an open gaming platform (Chrome Console?) it'll be very different from almost everything Google has done up until now.

hmmmmmm

[james_van]

hmmmmmmmmm, not sure how i feel about this.

OK

[Forty Two Tenfold]

There you go.