Google and Zynga: Crocodile and Plover?

I'm sure everyone can recall crocodile and plover's symbiotic relationships featured on Nature channel or the like. Crocodile offers food to plover, and plover removes annoying leeches from crocodile's teeth. This reminds me of what I'm seeing between Google, the search giant and Zynga, the social gaming powerhouse. As my past blog discussed Google's strategy of reviving their social network ambition through social gaming, I found another evidence while I was reading my Twitter feed this morning.

All Facebook ran excellent charts today juxtaposing Facebook and Zynga factsheets. There are a couple of things to note from this comparison charts, in addition to its creative graphics.

First is the size of active user base of Facebook and Zynga. Although Facebook is growing at impressive rate past 52 weeks, Zynga has peaked earlier. Yet another reason why Google is so interested in Zynga because they want to reproduce Zynga-effect on their social network site.

Second is Google's quiet funding to Zynga. There were rumors floating around back in July 2010 that Google was directly injecting capitals to Zynga. All Facebook article suggest that Google's funding must have been around a few hundreds of million USD. Google's strategy seems even more obvious.

Now, the question is when Google crocodile will finish cleaning its teeth, and ready to take on Facebook alligator in nearby swamps. That would be interesting match to watch.