
Google Secretly Invested In Zynga, Preparing To Launch Google Games - daniel_levine
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/10/google-secretly-invested-100-million-in-zynga-preparing-to-launch-google-games/
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mynameishere
Can you imagine working on Farmville? I mean, it would be like going into work
every day to refine the equivilent of the Fisher Price moo farm toy [1] except
a) for adults and b) relatively juvenile. Imagine the meetings, mostly run by
marketing idiots.

"Okay, we need the new chewy coco grove coconut tree special item out by next
Monday. So that means everyone's coming in on saturday."

But how can you argue with 85 million users and a billion in revenue? Google
sure can't.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek_qxoGDyAw>

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code_duck
How is this different than the rest of the game industry?

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patio11
I hate to say it for fear of giving aid and comfort to my Gender Studies
professors, but I think a major portion of the reason why Blizzard et al get
geek cred and FarmVille does not is because FarmVille is played by women.

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nostrademons
I think that's only true in the sense that people _always_ give more cred to
products that they, personally, use. It's the same reason that Google = sexy
while enterprise software = not sexy. Almost everybody uses Google, but very
few people use any given enterprise software package (and when they do, they
usually hate it).

If it were just a male/female thing, you'd expect games like SimCity and
Civilization to _not_ get geek cred, since their appeal straddles gender
lines.

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alanh
Just throwing this out there: I consider it unethical to invest in Zynga.

 _Edit:_ They are essentially using psychology, social and otherwise, to
ultimately trick people out of their money. A classic on the topic:
[http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-
gaming...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming-
ecosystem-of-hell/)

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s3graham
Care to expand? I'm not especially familiar with them other than they make
some casual games.

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Tichy
A while ago they were involved in a scandal, when it became clear that most of
their money came from ads for scams. Don't have a link for you, but should be
easy to find. (Edit: "Scamville" might be a good keyword to try).

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dieterrams
Does this mean we can finally abandon the idea that Google's mission is "to
organize the world's information"?

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Sember
In my opinion Google is all over the place, everywhere at the same time which
could lead to overextension of resources and finances. This could ruin Google
at some point in the future, they are losing focus.

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dirtyaura
Big tech companies should be all over the place. If they focus too much, they
will die, because ability to change is a survival strategy in tech sector.

And this particular case seems to very strategic for Google. It's believed
(inside Google too) that Facebook could be the major thread to Google, if
people start searching in Facebook first and go to Google only as a second
option. Thus, attacking Facebook directly is very strategic move.

And it seems to fit nicely to Android strategy too.

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Jun8
I think Google's worry about Facebook (partly justified, partly not) is
starting to cause them to make pointless (and time wasting) decisions.

If I had 5mins with Sergei and Larry, I would say (after taking a long sip
from the free organic drink I just got from the snack bar we're standing next
to)

"Look, the real enemy is not FB but Apple (and sometimes your own engineering
hubris, e.g. Buzz), so focus all your troops on this front. Don't dilute your
strengths with topsy-turvy fads like Farmville. Remember the last time you
tried that route when you tried to copy Second Life's act, does anyone even
remember them now? Concentrate on (i) getting an Android tablet out, and (ii)
get a $99 Google TV box running on Atom with cool software (not the sorry
thing you showed at the I/O) to beat Apple to the punch.

It's _that_ simple."

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marcusbooster
And I like to think they'd respond,

"Look Jun8, in 12 years we've built a company worth upwards of 150 billion
dollars, and you've amassed roughly 844 karma points."

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code_duck
Well, how much karma has Larry Page racked up on HN??

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seldo
Oh Google. The sharks are circling and you're strapping on your waterskis.

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peter123
It's strategic for both parties. Google wants to get Facebook users onto their
own network and Zynga needs to reduce their sole dependence on Facebook.

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hunterclarke
Is it just me, or is Zynga raising an absolutely obnoxious amount of money?

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bpm140
They've been profitable since their very first quarter and, according to the
TC article, they will likely make as much in profit next year as they've
raised in the last three years.

The fundraising is almost exclusively used for acquisition, so what's the
obnoxious part?

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speek
I don't quite understand how this fits into the grand scheme of Google. Now I
think Google is just buying stuff to buy stuff. Though I could see acquiring
user-interaction data being useful, especially in the casual space.

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jgilliam
Google is freaking out over Facebook. This gives them both a chance to build
out their own social graph (say as a launch partner for Google Me), and access
to a copy of most of Facebook's.

This data is important for search, but critical for ads.

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naturalized
This is great news for China. While the Silicon Valley gets rotten from
inside, making this useless stuff, they will be buying bankrupt US chip
companies and making their own microprocessors.

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pclark
You consider Zynga, a company with a ridiculous amount of attention from
users, and expected to hit $1Bn revenues next year, useless?

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bd
Interesting. Both Google and Zynga are very much data driven companies.

Remember story about Google choosing shade of blue by testing 41 variants?

That's how Zynga designs its (extremely successful) games. Everything is
measured and analyzed. They are basically conducting one massive experimental
psychology study of what makes people (s)tick.

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po
Farmville is evil; Zynga makes Farmville; Google invested in Zynga.

Q.E.D.

;-)

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seldo
Google bought DoubleClick. They were tainted from then on, as far as I'm
concerned. DoubleClick had a known shady history, and executives from DC moved
into positions of influence within Google.

~~~
EricBurnett
Just curious, what terrible things has DoubleClick done since being bought by
Google? If anything, I'd say Google 'tainted' them and not the other way
around.

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seldo
It's not that DoubleClick has done the terrible things, it's that Google has
done them. The naked attempt to monetize wikipedia's eyeballs that was Knol.
The careless lack of attention to privacy that was the Buzz launch. The very
existence of Buzz, a me-too product that does nothing different to the
existing competition. It's hard to imagine the Google of 2004 launching those
products.

Of course, it's not all bad -- Chrome is very much an old-Google product,
pouring innovation into a category that was content to slowly iterate. Android
is another example of good-for-Google, good-for-everyone innovation. But those
examples are getting fewer and further between, while copycat products are
getting more common.

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code_duck
Well, good luck to Google. Given that the public donated $175k to a group of
inexperienced, unknown programmers who did little more than say they were out
to replace Facebook, I'd say the market is ready for an alternative.

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ojbyrne
Every day I go to 7-11 for coffee. And cringe at the zynga branding
everywhere.

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code_duck
Really? I miss the good old days when Jedis and Jabba were on 7-11 glasses, in
that case.

We don't have 7-11 here.... Let it be known that I pine for Super Nachos.

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CoachRufus87
Zynga games will tie into the GoogleMe ecosystem nicely.

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llimllib
Google -> Google!

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joshu
Ouch

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niekmaas
Wasn't Zynga threatening to leave Facebook or start a (long) legal battle?
This is ideal for Google of course since they have been struggling to get
their social networks to really take off. Getting Zynga to move to Google
exclusively could be the boost they have been waiting for so long.

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awa
I think it would be suicide for Zynga to abandon Facebook completely, afaik,
they make games which can easily duplicated and hence alternatives would pop
up on Facebook soon.

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barmstrong
This sounds like TechCrunch editorializing and trying to make a story out of
nothing.

I don't think Google cares about this.

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greenlblue
The article says something about social graph but that doesn't make sense.
Gmail basically rules the world when it comes to email so they already have a
lot of social graph information just from email correspondences. There must be
some other strategy they are pursuing.

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Encosia
In terms of userbase, GMail is still third behind Hotmail and Yahoo. I would
bet that current Farmville users overlap less with GMail than other email
services too.

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Vorcha
The potential of this is astounding, across Google web, Android, and Chromium.

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metachris
Anyone has heard of "Google Games" before? It seems to be a social gaming
platform which will be available on Android as well. Couldn't find any info
about it though.

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Eternal_Cowboy
Isn't TechCrunch a terribly unreliable source? I thought after the last.fm
debacle that you shouldn't exactly trust them.

