• TechCrunch, Thursday, February 11, 2010 3:13 PM

A source tells TechCrunch that Google has acquired social search service Aardvark for about $50 million. Founded by ex-Google engineers, Aardvark lets users ask questions and get immediate responses from their friends and friends of friends.

As of October 2009, the service had 90,361 users, of whom 55.9% had created content --asked or answered a question - according to a research report published by the startup earlier this month. The site's average query volume was 3,167.2 questions per day, with the median active user asking 3.1 questions per month. Also of likely interest to Google, mobile users are more active than desktop users. To date, Aardvark has raised about $6 million in venture capital.

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