Google Buys Gamevertising Startup Adscape

Coming soon: in-game AdSense. After Microsoft bought gamevertising company Massive last year, I figured it wouldn’t be long before Google followed suit.

Following a Wall Street Journal report that surfaced late last month, industry sources have confirmed that Google has indeed entered the in-game advertising space. According to business publication Red Herring, Google has reached an agreement to purchase Adscape Media for a cool $23 million.

Adscape, a company that officially launched in February of last year, hasn’t firmly established its position in the in-game advertising market and the company has not gotten the kind of attention that Massive, IGA or Double Fusion have received, but what Adscape does give Google is some interesting technology patents. And with Google’s vast resources, the company could no doubt leverage the in-game ad tech to eventually gain a solid foothold in the space.

William Slawski lists those interesting technology patents here. Adscape’s lack of existing advertiser relationships shouldn’t be a problem, thanks to AdWords’ massive roster of advertisers. Since we’re at the start of an online advertising boom right now, expect to see more free ad-supported games in the years to come.

Despite having the biggest game portal among the Big Three, Yahoo is running late to the gamevertising game. Google’s purchase should be a wake-up call to them.

First Rollable Cellphone Screen Unfolds

This baby’s straight out of science fiction: a small mobile phone whose screen rolls out to five inches.

While smaller than a typical mobile phone, the new device features a display which extends up to 5-inches and may simply be stored away after use by folding it, thanks to the flexibility of the polymer based display material. The device features the largest display available in the industry for the same form factor, the 16 grey levels combined with a high contrast and high reflectivity display for paper like reading experience enables comfortable reading, even in bright sunlight. Future developments include colour and moving image capable display.

The rollable display enables reading entire newspapers as well as books that can be delivered and bought through TIM’s mobile network via a regular SIM Card within the device – and then stored in the terminal’s memory which will be extremely large (starting from 4 Gigabytes available in the first models).

Combined with TIM’s mobile services, the device will permit instant access to personalised data, e-mail, news, information feeds and location sensitive maps wherever and whenever. The always-on user experience is made possible through an optimised combination of cellular (EDGE/UMTS) and broadcast (DVB-H IP data-casting) mobile functionalities as well as a mini-USB slot for PC and wired/wireless broadband data connection.

Together with superior text and graphic content, the new device will also download and play music, audiobooks and audio podcasts. Featuring single-handed navigation and control via an innovative touch sensitive LED user interface, as well as intuitively simple software, users will enjoy a new unique experience in managing, accessing relevant and personalized high value content. With the extremely low power consumption of the display, the new device will deliver an exceptional 10 days of average usage time between battery charges.

(Via Martijn van Osch.)