Analyst: Google Sees Growth in Online Games

An analyst of the video game industry suggests that Google will look to drive the growth of online gaming as a good way to draw players into its other services, like a possible social network, Google Checkout or the Android operating system for mobile devices.

Internet giant Google, a company that is powered by the earnings of its search engine but is active in a lot of technological fields, seems to be preparing a major move into the online game market.

The company has invested somewhere between 100 and 200 million dollars into Zynga, the company which has created Farmville, the most popular title playable on social network Facebook.

Google is also rumored to be actively engaged in negotiations with other developers with the ultimate aim being to launch a social network platform that will link with a networking service that might be named Google Me.

And analyst Colin Sebastian, who is watching the video games industry for Lazard Capital Markets, believes that the latest moves from Google point to the company seeing online gaming as a sort of gateway that can be used to promote other services, from its search engine to its Android powered phones.

Sebastian believes that adoption of online games by Google is a “strategic necessity” for the company especially when taking into account the rise of Facebook, the social platform that itself tries to become more hospitable to gaming.

The Lazard Capital analyst also thinks that Google will launch something similar to the Apple App Store within the Chrome Internet browser.

This will allow Google to control what kind of content the company is associated with and will help drive gamers to its other services.

Important game designers like Brian Reynolds and Sid Meier have recently become interested in creating video games for Facebook. It will be interesting to see whether Google can attract other top designers to its own social platform.