Google continues to gobble up companies that will form the backbone of its new social strategy and the upcoming war with Facebook. Last week it was Slide. And they are now buying Jambool and their Social Gold payment product, we’ve heard from multiple sources. The purchase price is $55 million plus another $15 million -$20 million in an earnout, say our sources.
Social Gold gives app developers the ability to build payments directly into their games and other applications. It was founded by Amazon veterans Vikas Gupta and Reza Hussein, and has raised $6 million in funding.
Like other payments companies they’ve been hit very hard by Facebook Credits. Gupta recently went on a bit of a rant about Facebook Credits, in fact.
See our recent What Games, Places, Music And News Could Mean For Google Checkout for how Google might implement Social Gold into their existing checkout product and their new social platform.
Google isn’t commenting on the story. We haven’t heard back from Jambool.
Jambool, Inc. operates Social Goldâ„¢, an industry-leading virtual monetization platform. Social Gold enables developers to create and manage their own white-labeled virtual currency, to provide a in-app payments experience to their users, and to optimize their virtual economy using analytics. Social Gold powers the virtual currency and payment solutions for thousands of online games and virtual worlds. Jambool is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Seattle and Singapore. Investors include Hit Forge, Charles River Ventures, Bay Partners, and Madrona Venture...
Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information....
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