Google buys social payment provider Jambool

Posted by Leah McBride Mensching on August 16, 2010 at 1:20 PM

Google has bought online social payment start-up Jambool, a next step past search and into the realm of "using personal relationships as the basis to find and share online content," the San Jose Mercury News reported today.

TechCrunch first reported the buy last week, noting that Jambool's Social Gold payment product gives developers the tools they need to "build payments directly into their games and other applications." The price of the buy wasn't released by either company, but sources told TechCrunch it was around US$70 million, which includes about $20 million in earnouts. The buyout was announced Friday.

"With its massive store of data not just about individual users but about their network of relationships, Facebook is a challenge to Google's ambitions in display advertising," the Mercury News article explained. "And because much of what happens within Facebook is invisible to Google's search engine, the billions of hours people spend on Facebook can't make money for Google's bread and butter - keyword search advertising.

Jambool's founders, Vikas Gupta and Reza Hussein, created the platform in 2006, and went live in 2009. The start-up raised $5 million in funding last year, according to paidContent. The buyout is Google's 23rd since July 2009.

"Our vision is to build world-class products that help developers manage and monetize their virtual economies across the globe. When the opportunity arose to join forces with Google to execute against this vision, we couldn't pass it up," Gupta and Hussein said in a statement.