Google buys social outfit Slide

Tentacles in your home

Snoop and search outfit Google has acquired Slide, a San Francisco-based social software outfit for a cool $182 million, plus an extra $46 million forked out to retain the outfit's employees.

Google reckons Slide is "a social technology company with an extensive history of building new ways for people to connect with others across numerous platforms online."

in a statement on its blog, Google said it reckon the web "is about people".

"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."

And it - of course.

"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," the Googler bogged.

Slide has developed virtual community applications such as SuperPoke and FunSpace which feature on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

Google is believed to want to build its own social network to rival FaceBook.