Google officially acquires Adscape

Last month, Red Herring reported that Google had bought Adscape. The tech-industry journal said the deal had the search-engine giant paying $23 million for the in-game ad firm, which was founded in February 2006 by former Sega executives Chris Gilbert and Bernie Stolar. However, at the time, no official confirmation was forthcoming from either party.

Now the deal is officially sealed. Today on its blog, Google announced that it is indeed "acquiring Adscape." The announcement did not outline the financial details of the buyout, nor did it give a timeline for its finalization.

"Unlike television, gamers can make games their own--customizing their experience in new ways--and we are helping them do that big time," Stolar said in a post on the Google blog. "Our charge at Adscape has always been to honor the game that was developed and find new ways to enable that game to continue so others can enjoy it. That's why we are so stoked to join Google--because these guys get it, and are committed to helping us continue our mission."

One of Adscape's in-game ad competitors, the Microsoft-owned Massive, issued a press release in the hopes of blunting the Adscape-Google announcement's impact. "We've got quite a head start here," said Massive CEO Cory Van Arsdale. "We've made fantastic progress--50-plus live game titles in the network today, 60-plus blue chip advertisers, and 115 million-plus game sessions to date--and we're just getting started."