Google’s swing on Facebook with Angry Birds
Google - the leader in search engine technologies has launched many new products and features over the past few months to attract different segments of customers. In its ever increasing fold of new products, Google+ was added to its portfolio in recent past. Having had shared its social networking facet, Google+ to limited users, it is vigorously trying to capture the gaming market also through social networking sites.
It appears that Google+ wants to touch every sphere of social networking domain with its own flavors by minimizing the drawbacks of other social networking sites and adding unique and user friendly features. As part of this venture, it has launched popular games like Angry Birds and Zynga Poker on Google+.
Cluster free gaming environment
Google’s game plan is to isolate the drawbacks of the competitor, add new features and facilities which are unique and thus attract new customers to its fold. As per the environment, games will not pop up on the same page of the Google+, rather they will appear in a different page and thus removing the much cluster on the homepage. Updates on games and related information will not show in Google+ member’s news stream. Google has taken special care to avoid this annoying feature faced by Facebook user community.
Google woos developers
On one side, Google’s move may influence gaming developers as it tries to woo them by offering whooping 95% of the revenue generated from gaming service offered through Google+ and just keeping 5% of the revenue for Google. The competitor, Facebook on the other hand offers only 70% to the developers and keeps the rest of 30% for themselves.
Games shared to limited Google+ users
As of now, out of the 10 million users who have access to Google+, only a fraction of users will have access to 16 series of games launched by Google. Those users who have access to Games will have Games+ icon on top of the page. Google aims at providing distraction free environment by not displaying games outside the games tab. All games played earlier will not pop up automatically. If you don’t like games, you will be able to ignore them completely.
First set of games
The following are the 16 set of games available so far on Google+
Angry Birds, Bejeweled Blitz, Bubble Island, City of Wonder, Collapse! Blast, Crime City, Diamond Dash, Dragon Age Legends, Dragons of Atlantis, Edge World, Flood-It!, Monster World, Sudoku, Wild Ones, Zombie Lane and Zynga Poker.
Complete control on playing games
You have complete control to organize gaming environment. You will be able to control on how to play the game and with whom you want to share. As per Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President, Google Engineering, these games are available when you want them and disappear when you don’t want.
Facebook launches its own new features
Incidentally, Facebook has launched its own set of new features including a larger gaming screen and ticker showing the scoring of friends, games played by them and their achievements. Facebook believes by adding more features like what your friends are playing and their scores and achievements will help you find about a new game.
The race continues for better social gaming environs. Do you think Google+ will set a new pace?
