• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, June 5, 2012

Likely bolstering Google+’s publisher tools, Google has agreed to buy Meebo for a reported $100 million.

“We don’t know if this means there’ll be some sort of new Google+ toolbar coming,” reports TechCrunch. “But presumably the existing Meebo properties will be morphed into G+ or otherwise closed."

Driving the deal, Google is “hungry for new ways of reaching its still-nascent social networking audience,” according to the  Los Angeles Times.

Still, “how Meebo will be integrated into the Google world remains to be seen,” ZDNet reports. “Meebo’s most popular product as of late, the Meebo Bar, has the potential for improving the current Google bar at the top or serving as a way to integrate Google’s other social services (Google+ and Google Chat, among others) on other media and entertainment sites across the Internet.”

Early in its seven-year existence, Meebo offered a simple way for users to chat across IM protocols. More recently, it has experienced success with its toolbar, which Web publishers can add to their sites, and includes chat and sharing options, as well as ads.

Meebo also recently introduced a service for consumers, which “seemed to position the company in the field of social discovery,” Business Insider writes. “So Google might be buying Meebo to bolster its online-advertising business. Or it might be keen on Meebo's social-discovery tools to bolster Google+. Or both.”

“These days it looks like Meebo’s moving into the content direction with its main product, the Meebo Bar, which allows users to build an ‘interest profile’ by favoriting [sic] things they like,” notes VatorNews.

Yet, regarding Google’s rationale for the deal, The Next Web writes: “The real reason isn’t just Meebo’s cool technology and experience with the actual chat interface, it’s because Meebo found a way to actually monetize chat.”