Google has purchased social games company SocialDeck Inc., the latest in a series of strategic acquisitions and investments aimed at helping the world's #1 search engine break into the social networking space and compete with the likes of Facebook. The deal was announced via SocialDeck's website, but financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The company has created a number of games for the iPhone, Blackberry and Facebook -- which makes it an even better fit for Google, who also has its hooks into the mobile phone market.
Last week Google snapped up Angstro, a Facebook app developer whose claim to fame is a program that finds new photos on Facebook and creates a real-time social address book for users. Add to that Google's ongoing talks with companies including Playdom, EA's Playfish and Zynga to bring their games to its future social network, and Google has what it hopes is the perfect storm to take the fight to Facebook.
While there is no denying that it has its work cut out for it, former combatants like Yahoo can attest to the fact that Google has a way of surprising everyone.
