Google has bought an awful lot of companies in 2010, but it hasn't been hard to spot a theme to its purchases over the last few months.
Inside Social Games spotted news posted on the home page of SocialDeck, a mobile-game developer, that Google has acquired the company for an undisclosed sum.
"We're super excited to announce that someone found our social games as fun as you have--in this case, that 'someone' is Google," the company wrote.
SocialDeck has created mobile games, such as Pet Hero, and Shake and Spell, on the back of a "social-gaming platform technology" it developed. Sound familiar? Perhaps that's because Google has bought two other social-gaming companies--Slide and Jambool--in just the last few weeks.
Anyone who follows Google closely won't be shocked at the notion that the company is clearly building out the social-media portfolio it found itself unable to develop in-house over the last several years. Paid Content laid it out nicely over the weekend, producing a chart showing that Google has concentrated its acquisition activity on its core business--search--and the business it would most like to be in--social.