Google pays $182m for Slide

Google is buying social games developer Slide in a $182m deal to be announced on Friday, according to a source at news site TechCrunch.

The move comes as part of the search engine site’s ongoing attempts to set up a social games strategy capable of rivaling Facebook.

Google has previously invested $200m in Zynga in order to form the cornerstone of a new Google Games”, which is expected to launch at some point later this year.

Slide, currently run by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, was valued at $500m in 2008. If the reports of the deal price prove accurate, it will leave Levchin considerably short of his previously stated aim to see Slide become bigger than Paypal.

Story originally published on Develop