Google May Be Getting into Gaming

Google is into everything these days. From wind farms to operating systems, there’s not much that Google doesn’t have covered. But gaming may sound a little far-fetched even for this company. Yet, all the signs point towards this unlikely path, Google has a job posting for Product Management Leader, Games. There’s no way of interpreting this other than the obvious, Google is getting into games.

“The Product Management Leader, Games will be a flexible, results-oriented, and experienced senior leader who will be responsible for developing Google's games commerce product strategy and partnering to build and manage the business with a cross-functional team. You will have visionary product insight, combined with experience in the online content business, significant technical expertise and extensive leadership and business skills,” the job posting, uncovered by TechCrunch, reads.

Google has already hired people with background in gaming and acquired Israeli game maker LabPixies just a couple of weeks ago. It’s clear that the company means business and is amassing a team to help it create games. This isn’t just about selling titles, or some sort of game marketplace, from the looks of it, Google plans to develop its own.

Of course, it’s not going to take on Electronic Arts, the market Google is interested in is small, online or mobile games, the kind Zynga makes or the ones that have become very popular on the iPhone. Google has little experience with games and the one that it does have is not encouraging. But it does have a massive platform to distribute any title it would create.

It is one of the largest players online, just creating a game for its iGoogle homepage would ensure it a huge potential audience. But it goes deeper than that, Andoid phones are selling like hot cakes and the Android Marketplace is growing at a huge rate. And since games have become one of iPhone’s biggest selling points and made Apple a serious player in the handheld console market, to Nintendo’s dismay, Google wants Android to compete. It goes beyond mobile gaming, though, with Google Chrome OS coming out later this year and Android getting into various other devices, like TVs, Google has no shortage of places where it could insert its games.