Google agrees to acquire Meebo to expand its Google+ team

As expected, Google has agreed to buy social-messaging and advertising company Meebo, a move that will help the search giant fill out its growing Google+ team.

“For more than seven years we’ve been helping publishers find deeper relationships with their users and to make their sites more social and engaging,” the company wrote on its blog. “Together with Google, we’re super jazzed to roll up our sleeves and get cracking on even bigger and better ways to help users and website owners alike.”

In a circulated statement to the press, Google said the Meebo staffers would join the Google+ group and help create new ways for users to socially interact on the web.

We are always looking for better ways to help users share content and connect with others across the web, just as they do in real life. With the Meebo team’s expertise in social publisher tools, we believe they will be a great fit with the Google+ team. We look forward to closing the transaction and working with the Meebo team to create more ways for users to engage online.

The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but earlier rumors suggested that Meebo would be bought for around $100 million.

VentureBeat Editor-in-Chief Matt Marshall previously wrote about how a Google acquisition of Meebo would make a lot of sense. Meebo has continued to explore ways to deliver content and advertising that are relevant to user interests through the Meebo bar (see above), Meebo’s Mini Bar, and Bookmarklet. Google will pull from this type of expertise to improve how Google+ works across the web. (Because people are hardly using Google+ natively.)