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News >> Technology >>
Google seals the deal with Slide
By siliconindia
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Monday, 09 August 2010, 20:56 IST
Bangalore: Search engine giant Google has acquired online entertainment company Slide for a amount of $182 million. An additional $46 million was paid for employee retention bonuses. Slide is a San-Francisco based manufacturer of social apps for sites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster and Orkut.
The main objective of this buy-out lies in Google's aim of gaining foothold in the social web arena. This is an important field where Google wants to grow as Americans spend their 33 percent of their online time in social networking and online gaming.
Slide was founded by Max Levchin, a co-founder of PayPal. Some of the apps developed by Slide include SuperPoke Pets, Top Fish, SPP Range and SuperPocus Academy of Magic.
With this deal, Google has taken another step toward its foray into social gaming. Google, last month, had invested an amount of $150 million in Zynga, the social gaming giant, renowned for the creation of popular games such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars. Now it remains to be seen whether all these acquisitions will lead to the creation of the rumored Google social network, Google Me.