Google to take a dive into social gaming?

Google has been dropping hints that they're preparing to take on Facebook's supremacy as "social gaming" king and begin venturing into the market themselves. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is now in talks with various popular online game developers for something that will take the wind out of Facebook's sails and, let's face it, get hundreds of thousands of housebound single moms to plant virtual crops and initiate virtual mob hits. And who's surprised? Companies like Playfish and Zynga have made millions for Facebook... and Google wants a slice.

In an interview this week, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt declined to confirm the development of a social-networking service that would incorporate social games, rumored to be called "Google Me." When asked if Google's service might resemble Facebook's, Mr. Schmidt said "the world doesn't need a copy of the same thing."

Google's push into social games represents the latest attempt by the Web-search leader to capture users and advertising dollars that are increasingly flowing to social networking, an area dominated by Facebook, Twitter Inc. and others.

It'll be interesting to see if Google, whose social networking offering called Orkut represents a mere slice of the popularity that rival Facebook enjoys, can match the "social" with the "gaming". It's not necessarily going to be a Field of Dreams scenario: Just because Google builds it doesn't mean they will come.