据纽约时报的消息，google据传并购了社交游戏开发公司slide，后者在facebook开发商中排行第十四，月活跃用户达到1465万，旗下top friends应用达到了775万的月活跃用户量。

据称此次并购涉及2亿2800万美元，目前双方都拒绝对这样的传闻作出评论。本周早先，google首席执行官Eric E. Schmidt对外宣传社交网络战略对于google的未来相当重要。

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slide由前paypal联合创始人Max Levchin建立。之前slide曾获得多方投资的7800万美元。

Google has acquired Slide, the start-up that makes apps for social networking Web sites, according to two sources briefed on the deal.

Google will pay around $228 million for the company, according to one of the sources. Officials at Google and Slide declined to comment.

The acquisition is one of the clearest signals yet that Google is planning moves into social networking. Google has also invested some $150 million in Zynga, the biggest online social gaming company, according to sources briefed on the investment.

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In an interview earlier this week, before news of the acquisition, Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said that social networking is important to Google because “search is going to get better with more social information.”

“We have understood for a long time that social stuff is very important,” Mr. Schmidt said in the interview. “The question that’s in everyone’s minds is why are we trying to create a competitor to Facebook, and the answer is we’re not going to create a competitor to Facebook. It’s something different.”

Yet he also said that it was more likely that Google would host games and other sources of entertainment, rather than create them.

“It’s hard to see how we could end up as becoming a significant gaming or entertainment source,” he said. “It’s much more likely that we would become an infrastructure for those sorts of things.”

Slide, which was founded by Max Levchin, a PayPal co-founder, makes virtual goods and social games that people play on social networking sites. For example, on Slide’s SPP Ranch, Facebook users can raise virtual animals and sell them for virtual currency.

The sale of virtual goods in social games are expected to reach $835 million this year, according to Inside Network, a firm that researches the business. As a result, virtual goods companies are attracting attention from big companies. Last month, Disney bought Playdom in a deal that could be worth $763.2 million and last year, Electronic Arts bought Playfish in a deal worth up to $400 million. Zynga, which has a deep relationship with Facebook,  is widely expected to make a public offering.

Slide raised $78 million in venture capital from investors including Khosla Ventures, Mayfield Fund, BlueRun Ventures and Founders Fund, the investment firm of another PayPal co-founder, Peter Thiel.（source：nytimes）