Google Secretly Invested $100+ Million In Zynga, Preparing To Launch Google Games
48 replies, posted
[quote]Google has quietly (secretly, one might say) invested somewhere between $100 million and $200 million in social gaming behemoth Zynga, we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. The company has raised somewhere around half a billion dollars in venture capital in the last year alone, including $150 million from Softbank Capital last month and $180 million late last year from Digital Sky Technologies, Tiger Global, Institutional Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz. The Softbank announcement was never officially confirmed by the company, however, and the Google investment was likely part of that deal as well.
The investment part of the deal closed a month ago or so. A larger strategic partnership is still in process.
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.
And there’s more. These same sources are saying that Zynga’s revenues for the first half of 2010 will be a stunning $350 million, half of which is operating profit. Zynga is projecting at least $1.0 billion in revenue in 2011, say our sources. This blows previous estimates out of the water.
Zynga continues to work on high level strategic business development deals. The reason these deals are so attractive to companies like Yahoo and now Google is this – Zynga allows them to rebuild the massive social graph, currently controlled by Facebook. For whatever reason people love to play these games and get passionately addicted to them, coming back day after day. That’s helped Facebook become what it is today. Google, Yahoo and others want some of that magic to rub off on them, too.
We’ve reached out to both Google and Zynga for comment. No word back yet from Google. Zynga declined to comment.[/quote]
[url=http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/10/google-secretly-invested-100-million-in-zynga-preparing-to-launch-google-games/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)&utm_content=Twitter]TechCrunch[/url]
Harvesting ads in Farmville is gonna be fun.
Oh my.
First Youtube, now this.
Fuck two evil empires join hands it's over!
Uh oh
[editline]09:26PM[/editline]
This is very bad.
what, googlefarm?
search wars? googlepoker?
Please. God. Kill me.
Obligatory "I for one welcome our new Google overlords."
I had never even heard of Zynga until the Escapist competition. If they keep doing what they're doing, I couldn't care less.
Fucking disgusting, I can't believe anybody plays this fucking trash, moreover, it scares me that so many people play this shit.
Google is evil. I really think they will enslave mankind and watch every step we take. Google earth and all.
But that's just me.
[QUOTE=Kilr;23263964]Fucking disgusting, I can't believe anybody plays this fucking trash, moreover, it scares me that so many people play this shit.[/QUOTE]
Calm down. If you're talking about this farmville stuff, the point is you don't play it for ages on end. You attend to the farm, invest in some new things and come back later to see how it's progressed. Then you get on with your real life. You sound like the kind of person that dismisses people as "casuals" as if that's some kind of insult.
[QUOTE=Kilr;23263964]Fucking disgusting, I can't believe anybody plays this fucking trash, moreover, it scares me that so many people play this shit.[/QUOTE]
Lots of people do. Sheeple.
So google is exploiting their desire for shitty games and making more money to give us all 1Gb/s internet connection. :Downs:
um why the fuck is google associating with zynga
the idea of a company with more information about its users than the average country has on its citizens associating with a company whos CEO takes pride in the fact he's pulled off many a scam in his history of running the company is very disturbing
Who cares in the long run? As long as there is a market for these games they are going to be produced, at least it is Google who is doing it.
:uhoh:
Oh dear Google really is everywhere.
Haha, this just reminded me, I was getting gas (petrol for you brits) a few weeks ago and the pump said "zynga! zynga! zynga!" after I paid, I was just like WTF?
At this rate i predit google will own all of the internet by the year 2026.
Guys, I just learned about their next project!
Country of Google
[QUOTE=Sonicfan574;23265637]Guys, I just learned about their next project!
Country of Google[/QUOTE]
they want to go to the moon and claim sovereignty over it!
Google...
Google...
What has happened...
:eng99:
The end is nigh.
fuck, some Zynga games suck but oh well
Can Valve defeat Zynga now that it's Googlecharged?
[QUOTE=Mexican;23268429]Can Valve defeat Zynga now that it's Googlecharged?[/QUOTE]
What Valve has to do with it?
Next up: google toilet that lets you search foods you've eaten from the shits you've taken
also, google automobile and google airship.
Not very secret now is it.
Funny. I just bought Harvest Moon for the Gamecube, both of them.
So much better then this farmville shit.
Why are you all bitching? It's all just part of the economic world of business, if Google wants to expand, let it do so.
Zynga is garbage, pure garbage.
Get off my planet!
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