Internet giant Google has acquired social technology company Slide in a clever move that will enable it to compete against Facebook in the emerging battle-scape that will surround socially-based e-commerce, gaming and content sharing.
“For Google, the web is about people, and we’re working to develop open, transparent and interesting (and fun!) ways to allow our users to take full advantage of how technology can bring them closer to friends and family and provide useful information just for them,” explained David Glazer, engineering director at Google.
Slide is a company founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin in 2005 as a photo-sharing site. The growth of social gaming allowed Slide to grow with users sharing the company’s games for free as well as trading virtual gifts and currency.
“Slide has already created compelling social experiences for tens of millions of people across many platforms, and we’ve already built strong social elements into products like Gmail, Docs, Blogger, Picasa and YouTube,” Glazer explained.
“As the Slide team joins Google, we’ll be investing even more to make Google services socially aware and expand these capabilities for our users across the web.
“While we don’t have any detailed product plans to share right now, we’re thrilled to welcome Max and his very talented team to Google, and we can’t wait to work together to give people more and better tools to communicate and connect,” Glazer said on Friday.
