[aqzman]

I doubt it would ever happen, but I really wouldn't be surprised if Google attempted to acquire Value. They've been making moves to get in to the "casual" gaming space with Google Play and the Nexus Player. If they purchased Value they would effectively own a large segment of the "hardcore" PC gaming market share.

Again, I doubt it would ever happen, but it's interesting to consider what the impacts would be if they did. I don't think Value is for sale, and if it were Microsoft would be much more likely to purchase them.

[corin_]

They would have to pay more for Valve than any other company they've ever acquired with the exception of Motorola, I think. And I'm still not even sure Valve would say yes, even to a $10b offer (I'd hazard a guess at a fair offer being $5b-10b).

[dubcanada]

I really doubt Gabe would ever sell. He's just not that type of person, and Google would get zero benefit from Steam, its not their realm at all.

[corin_]

Completely agree about the not selling. Not so sure that Google would get zero benefit, though.

Firstly, Valve is extremely profitable, crazily so, and seems (imo) unlikely to stop being so profitable, so short of a crazily high PE ratio it would eventually pay for itself. Secondly, they'd be buying a userbase of 100m+, including presumably lots of interesting data from steam chat, gaming preferances, etc.