Google is trying to become more social with an increasing number of its services embracing “socially aware” features. The latest to join the social party is iGoogle, which just launched several gadgets, only in Australia for now, allowing users to collaborate, share content and even play games with their Google friends. There are 12 social gadgets available now, with more to come in the future.

“Starting this week, we're rolling out some new social gadgets for iGoogle to all Australian users. Not only can you continue to do all the things you love to do on your homepage, but you now have the option to share all kinds of information, play games and collaborate with your friends too,” Jeff Regan, iGoogle engineer, wrote on the company's down under blog.

“Your current gadgets will continue to work normally and you don't have to take advantage of the social gadgets if you decide it doesn't fit your interest. But by adding and enabling social gadgets, you'll be able to have an even deeper, interactive experience with your gadgets when you share them with friends.” he added.

Of the twelve gadgets eight were created by third parties and they're pretty varied, from chess games to photo sharing on Picasa or Flickr. There's even a Twitter-like Timeline widget that allows users to update their status. This isn't the first foray into social media as Google has been increasingly focused on the OpenSocial project, which provides a unified and “open” platform for third-party apps for social networks and the likes. In fact, this was one of the previous steps the company took in making its customizable homepage iGoogle more social by converting it into an OpenSocial container, allowing users to add the same apps they used on the social networks that support the platform, like MySpace or LinkedIn.

Still, while the technical aspects are top-notch, as expected from Google, the company doesn't really look like it has a very clear social media strategy, currently just bolting social features to existing products that weren't designed with this in mind. While it does have a solid foundation with the Contacts feature, which is enabled on many of its services, very few people would think of this being the equivalent of the “friends” in Facebook for example.