Rumours are swirling that Google may be in the process of acquiring Valve, the company that is behind the monumental success that is the Half-Life franchise.  Valve also owns Steam, the *only* distribution platform on PC’s with any great pull in the industry, with an install base of 15 million users.

Now, having personally used Steam since its early days (but not having used it for some time, I’ll admit), its one of those things that gamers love to hate.  There are issues around reliability, amongst other things.  But it deserves big props for being the only game in town, and really pioneering a way of selling and distributing games *online*.  Full versions of it.  And giving smaller indie publishers (long before the Xbox 360 Marketplace) a *potential* means of selling their wares.

How does Google fit in all of this? As MCV notes via Forbes, Google has been thinking of getting into games for a while.  Why?  Well, why not?  It already does online documents.  Online video.  It probably has its eyes on every dominant sector of the Internets, if not in content creation, then at least in the background machinery in terms of both finding and distributing information and productivity.

I could imagine a future where Google does pick up the Steam platform (via Valve), so that it has the automatic install base of 15 million, PLUS a way to quickly acquire the technology *and* engineers so that it create its own branded way of …

1. hosting and distributing games

2. searching for games

3. installing ads for games … ?

Oh, its a crazy idea.  But, in retrospect, probably just as crazy as Google acquiring the legal craziness that was YouTube.  Oh, Google’s not in the content business, we all said.  Oh, they’ll just get sued into oblivion we all said.

Well, Google’s looking crazy, all right.  Crazy, like a fox.

A billion dollar, Skynet-becoming, ad-serving, we-have-all-your-bases … fox.