Google Me looks to take over social networking with Zynga's help
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Over the weekend, TechCrunch broke a story that Google had discreetly invested between $100 million -- $200 million in social gaming giant Zynga.
This move most likely means that Google is looking to the creators of "Farmville" and "Mafia Wars" to become a huge part of Google Games when the company launches its latest foray into social networking, "Google Me," later this year.
Google, who's made previous attempts at loosening Facebook's stranglehold on social networking with Orkut and Buzz, has not been able to gain much traction in this space. However, with the addition of Zynga and the emphasis on gaming, some feel that Google may have more success with its latest assault.
For Zynga, apart from most estimates placing the total amount of capital raised by the company this year upwards of $500 million with Google's addition, this may also be another sign that the social gaming heavyweight may be trying to further remove itself from Facebook.
In addition to the deal reached with Google, Zynga also entered into a similar deal with Yahoo in June of this year.
Undoubtedly, these companies are after the estimated 237 million monthly users Zynga products currently enjoy. However for their part, while the symbiotic relationship between Facebook and Zynga has been fruitful for both companies, it has also been fraught with turmoil.
Most recently, Zynga was preparing to wage a long legal battle against the social networking giant over several issues.
At its crux was Facebook's mandate that the company could only use Facebook Credits instead of PayPal as the only form of payment Zynga could accept. Naturally, this was not acceptable to the company as the credits also came with a heavy 30 percent fee tied to them.
During that same time, TechCrunch also stated that Facebook was also trying to push Zynga into a long-term deal and had gone so far as to threaten to shut the company's games down for good.
In the end both sides agreed to a five-year deal, however many speculate on how much of a rift remains between the two.
