With mergers and acquisitions activity dropping off in terms of Facebook developers, the focus seems to be switching to pure play mobile developers, especially those with solid cross platform mobile experience.

So it is that Google continues to flash its cheque book. It's just bought US developer SocialDeck for an undisclosed fee.

Nation of million

SocialDeck was formed in 2008 and ironically, initially funded by BlackBerry Partners Fund. Its main output however has been casual social iPhone games including titles such as Shake & Spell, Color Connect, and Pet Hero MD.

It claims it had one million downloads of its titles during 2009.

SocialDeck also has its own technology. Called Spark it's a cross-platform social network, including chat, lobbies, leaderboards and gameplay elements, that works across Facebook, BlackBerry and iPhone.

"We're super excited to announce that someone found our social games as fun as you have - in this case, that "someone" is Google. SocialDeck has been acquired and we've joined the Google team," says a statement on the company's website.

[source: SocialDeck]