Google has privately invested as much as $200 million in social game developer Zynga. Zynga is best known for games like Farmville and Mafia Wars, which predominate on Facebook.
Zynga had expressed dissatisfaction with the terms Facebook enforced on the company, and were reported looking around for alternative platforms. Its collaboration with Yahoo was one step away, MSN’s Game Portal another, and its relationship with Google an even bigger one.
Although it has decided to retain a relationship with Facebook, its growth has put it in a much stronger place than it originally was.
Zynga Grows Like Mad
The $29 million Zynga had raised several years ago – for a total at the time of $40 million – almost seem like small potatoes now. Tech Crunch reported that it upped the total to half a billion in the last year, including a deal with Softbank.
“Zynga’s revenues for the first half of 2010 will be a stunning $350 million, half of which is operating profit. Zynga is projecting at least $1.0 billion in revenue in 2011, say our sources. This blows previous estimates out of the water.”
Google Games
Google’s desire to build a gaming destination site, Google Games, meshes nicely with Zynga’s leadership in the social game sphere, not to mention its estimated $5 billion in worth and 200 million users.
Google’s also been conscientious about serving its “downstream” – those areas of interest people track from the search engine. The next in line, as we reported, is gaming.
