San Francisco — Mountain View, California-based search engine leader Google has reportedly been on an acquisition spree, just coughed out $70 million, but this time agreed to acquire San Francisco, California-based Jambool, and its Social Gold payment system, which empowers developers to build payments into their games and applications, according to reports from TechcCrunch, citing unidentified sources. The price is estimated to be around $70 million, including earn-outs.
Time after time, critics have remarked that Google cannot create a successful social product, and described Google Buzz, Google Lively, and Google Wave as evidence. Google can buy successful social products, and just last week, the company acquired Slide, and last month it emerged that Google had secretly invested $100-$200 million in FarmVille developer Zynga.
If you have not heard of Jambool, do not worry. The company is reported to be contended against Facebook in the upcoming Google Me social network, as a direct competitor to Facebook Credits. Just last week, Google acquired social game and application developer Slide.
However, if this deal is finalized, it would add up to the search engine giant’s 19th acquisitions since August ’09. Speaking of which, Jambool raised a $5 million funding exactly a year ago. In addition to analytics and demand-side platforms, social payment startups are a current buzz among investors and companies like Google which are looking to keep acquiring.
Jambool’s “Social Gold” system enables developers to build their own white-labeled virtual currency systems. It supports virtual payment systems within renowned apps and online games, including Lil’ Green Patch and Mafia Wars.
Moreover, John Zdanowski, the former CFO of Linden Labs, is quoted on the Jambool homepage as saying, “If I were to build the Second Life economy again, I would do it on the Social Gold platform.”
So, with Google’s support, Social Gold could represent a real challenge of sorts to Facebook Credits.
Jambool was formed in August 2006 by Chief Executive Officer Vikas Gupta and Chief Technology Officer Reza Hussein, both of whom were former Amazon employees.
By the end of this year, the company intends to launch Google Games as an alternative platform to Facebook for casual gaming. This is pretty far from anything Google has had success with on its own, so it makes sense that the company is acquiring talent and technology to make this work.
So far, neither company was available for comment.