Google just put a dot to its desire to become part of the social sphere with its latest acquisition – the social search engine founded by some ex-Googlers called Aardvark. Although both companies have not yet issued an official statement about the deal, the buyout was confirmed through an email sent by Aardvark CEO Max Ventilla to TechCrunch confirming that indeed, Google has bought their company. The price – $50 million.
Aardvark is a social search engine that taps on the knowledge of the “expert crowd.” You can ask a question either from the web, IM, email, Twitter or iPhone and get answers from other people based on their right knowledge and experience to help, similar tastes and friends in common. The idea is similar to Yahoo Answers and Mahalo.
So, how do you see this coming into play with Google’s sphere of products and services? I could only think of one thing. Google will most likely index the database of answers in Aardrvark, and give them prominence in Google searches. Right now, if you make a “question-like” search query, most of the time Google SERPs display citations from Yahoo Answers or WikiPedia. Plus add the fact that some of those answers can be as real-time as Twitter streams are. But those are just my thoughts. Google surely has bigger plans for Aardvark.
