Google has so much money in the bank, what's $50 million between search engines?
If that were a question posed to Aardvark, the answer might be, "Our exit strategy."
According to early reports, Google is set to buy the "Help Engine" for a cool $50 million. Aardvark, which was started by former Google employees, lets you ask a question online, and that question gets pushed out to a network of people who might be able to give you an answer. Those answers are then sent to you via e-mail, or Twitter.
It's not that Aardvark posed any real threat to Google, or that the Google-to-Twitter combination hasn't already been established as a way to find information. But Google would be making a good move here, for (relatively) little money. A new, if much smaller, network of people, getting used to a cool service, who will now likely see Google ads related to their queries.
According to TechCrunch, which broke the story, the deal could be announced within a day or two.
