Google buys mobile-gamer SocialDeck

Search giant makes another move into social media arena with a social-gaming company

Google continues to buy up talent in the social-gaming space.

The search giant just acquired SocialDeck, the producer of games, such as Pet Hero, Color Connect and Shake & Spell specifically designed to be played on-the-go, for an undisclosed amount.

This purchase, which was announced on SocialDeck's blog, continues Google's push into social media and games. Google recently bought other social-gaming companies, including social photo-sharing service, Slide and more recently Angstro, a creator of applications that integrate with Facebook and Twitter, as well as Jambool, the makers of Social Gold.

Google has also made significant investments in social media related companies, like the recent $100m investment in Zynga, a social media gaming company and Google chief executive Eric Schmidt's investment in InternInc.com for an undisclosed amount. These new investments, on the whole, represent an increased interest in social networking technology from Google, which may have to do with the companies longstanding rivalries, and could be part of an attempt to beat Facebook at their own social game. 

Two-year-old SocialDeck, which is based in Canada and reached a million user downloads last year, distinguishes itself by allowing end users to play games across multiple platforms, such as iPhone, BlackBerry, and Facebook. As the service says on its site, its vision is to enable  “anywhere, anytime, anyone” gaming.

Say, for example that you set up a game on your Facebook account, but then were called away. You could continue your playing on your iPhone or BlackBerry without setting up a new account. Just sign in a start the game again, thanks to the fact that the game saves on cloud servers.

Games also save accomplishment listings to your Facebook profile, and users can set up their Twitter accounts to have those updates sent to their microblog followers. Users can also share in game information via tools like email and text message. 

Google and SocialDeck were not available for immediate comment.