Google+ gets Fridge to fight Facebook

NEW YORK, USA: Online groups startup Fridge announced on Thursday that it is joining the Google fold, as it has been bought by Google+, the new social networking platform from the search giant, which crossed 20 million users in three weeks.

“It has been an amazing ride developing Fridge, but most importantly we are very thankful to our enthusiastic community of users. We strongly believe in the group social experience and couldn’t think of a better place to realize our vision of bringing the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web as part of the Google+ Project,” the New York city-based start-up said in a blog post.

Fridge said its small staff will become part of the Google+ team.

Fridge offered a group-communication tool with photo-sharing and event-planning features. Though users can no longer upload any data on the site, Fridge said they can download their data till August 20.

“While you will no longer be able to post anything new to Fridge, you will still be able to download and save your data until Saturday August 20, 2011 at 6pm ET. After that, in accordance with our privacy policy, we will delete all user data,” said the blog.

It was on June 28 that Google launched the new social networking platform to take on giants like Facebook, and in three weeks it crossed the 20 million user mark, according to ComScore, which said Google+ had 20 million unique visitors since its launch, including five million visitors from the U.S.