The leaders behind a prominent Silicon Valley social search startup may be contemplating returning to the mothership.
TechCrunch is reporting that Aardvark, a company founded by ex-Googlers including CEO Max Ventilla, is weighing a $30 million-plus offer from Google for an acquisition.
The site just opened to the public in October and raised about $6 million from August Capital last fall. As Facebook grows by roughly 50 million users every two months, Google has been putting more resources into its social capabilities. The company recently rolled out a social search beta in October that pulls in results published by friends when a user makes a query.
Aardvark would help fill a gap in Google’s portfolio of social offerings and refine its new social search product better. It’s a startup that lets you ask questions of your social network in real-time, referring answers from friends or friends-of-friends. Aardvark answers about 90 percent of questions in under five minutes. The idea is that for many subjective queries, like where to go to eat or what kind of shoes to buy, the actual answers to a question may matter less than who answered them.
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