Zynga Acquires 'Social Web Browser' Company Flock

As it celebrates it six-year anniversary, "social web browser" company Flock announced that it has been purchased by FarmVille developer Zynga, marking the latter's eighth studio acquisition in as many months. Based in Redwood City (with an office in Victoria, British Columbia), Flock is best known for its free Windows/Mac/Linux/FreeBSD web browser, which is built on Chromium and has built-in features for social media services like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Blogger and more. Though the company claims over 10 million users around the world for the browser, it's struggled to stay relevant to online users and is now facing a well-funded competitor, RockMelt, in a questionably-lucrative market. Flock itself has received around $30 million in venture funding since 2005. Neither Flock or Zynga disclosed financial terms for the deal, but TechCrunch reports that both Google and Twitter were also bidding to buy the browser company, possibly motivated by the opportunity to absorb its engineering talent more so than its technology or product. Zynga has been on a buying spree in recent months, snatching up XPD Media (Beijing), Challenge Games (Austin), Unoh Games (Tokyo), Conduit Labs (Boston), Dextrose AG (Frankfurt), Bonfire Studios (October), and Newtoy Inc (December). It currently has over 1200 employees spread out across at least 15 studios. "Our team will help Zynga in achieving their goal of building the most fun, social games available to anyone, anytime -- on any platform," says Flock president and CEO Shawn Hardin. "We thank our users for their unwavering support and dedication, and we're thrilled to be going to a platform that shares our passion for combining great user experience and technology."