According to the Inquirer Google is planning on buying Valve, the developers of popular PC games including Counterstrike. Obviously Google is not interested in owning the gaming side (I wouldn’t think) but are more interested in Steam – the content distribution platform it uses to distribute its games, updates, add-ons, etc. What exactly is Steam and why does Google want the technology?
Steam is a successful digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation. It is used to distribute and manage (sometimes exclusively) a wide range of games entirely over the internet, stretching from one-man independent efforts to some of the world’s most popular. Steam is set apart from its peers in terms of functionality primarily by its residency in the system tray, and the desktop tasks that the client software performs, which will be detailed in the article, to make use of that position. – via Wikipedia
Valve currently publishes over 440 games to 15 million active users via Steam. So yes, it scales. So why does Google want it? Android Market. The Android Market will be the distribution vehicle for applications and content to the Android mobile platform (like the AppStore for the iPhone) and Valve’s Steam will power it on the backend.
Google has unveiled details of the Android Market open content distribution system on the Android Developers Blog. This will help end users find, purchase, download and install various types of content on their Android-powered mobile devices. Developers will be able to offer their content on an open system hosted by Google. – via TelecomPaper
Now this is all speculation at this point and the purchase has yet to be announced. If I am wrong – I’ll let you know here. I have another guess waiting as to why Google would purchase Valve’s Steam – but all signals point to using its CDN (Content Distribution Network).
Technorati Tags: google, valve, steam
Related posts:
- Google Android coming September 23 It’s official – Google’s Android platform will be launching next...
- Google Android shown off at I/0 Google Android on one of the next gen HTC phones....
- Mobile Place Pages From Google Local (iPhone & Android) via googlemobile.blogspot.com...
- Buzz Manager – Market Analysis I’ve been monitoring this segment of the industry for quite...
- Are classifieds a viable market? I started playing with some of these classified ads sites...
