Google Takes on Facebook With Games

Google wants to get in on FarmVille and Mafia Wars. The search engine giant's latest run at rival Facebook is an attempt to get a piece of the social gaming pie. Google recently took a financial stake in a social game developer, and is reportedly in talks with other online game companies about offering their games on the new social networking service it is building, the Wall Street Journal reports.

It's not clear when the new service would launch or what exactly it would be, but Google denies it's mimicking Facebook. "The world doesn't need a copy of the same thing," said a Google exec. Social game developers, who give Facebook a 30% cut of virtual purchases made in their games, may welcome the Google offering as a chance to decrease their booming businesses' dependence on Facebook. Click here for more on Google's "Facebook killer."