Google dishes out $10 million for fflick

Google flexes their financial muscle yet again by forking out $10 million to gobble up movie recommendation site fflick, where industry players say that this is most likely a strategic move to boost its upcoming YouTube movie service. The deal is currently in progress, where it will help Google gain access to a Twitter-based sentiment engine that is capable of gauging whether viewers prefer a particular movie or whether it has garnered enough pre-release momentum. Everything else is still rather blurry though since it isn’t clear whether fflick will survive as an independent company or will be subsumed wholly by Google. Expect the buyout to be announced formally before the week is over though.