The new Amazon Kindle comes in two colors: white and graphite. (© Amazon)

There’s a lot going on in tech news this week. Among the items I thought interesting include a report in The Wall Street Journal that Google is looking to introduce its own social networking service. I mean besides Orkut, Friend Connect and Buzz. Amir Efrati wrote that Google has been talking to social gaming giants Playfish, Playdom and Zynga about the possibility of bringing their wares to a Google-based service. Considering that Facebook now has more than 500 million subscribers, that’s a pretty large audience to go after. With every redesign and change in security policy, people complain that they’re leaving the social-networking service. In the near future, perhaps, they might have something viable to turn to.

And social gaming has really turned the corner in terms of its visibility. On Tuesday, Disney announced it had acquired Playdom for $563.2 million, according to Caroline McCarthy of CNET. She also wrote that Playdom could enjoy $200 million in potential earnouts. Around 42 million people play the company’s games. Tuesday was also the day when Kongregate, a Flash-game publisher with 10 million unique monthly visitors, announced it’d been snapped up by retailer GameStop, as Josh Lowensohn wrote for CNET. Zynga, for its part, remains independent, and there are signs that it may hold an initial public stock offering.

Jacqui Cheng wrote on Ars Technica that Amazon has unveiled two new Kindles — one that’s WiFi-only to drop its price point to reach more users, and the other that’s a redesigned version. The WiFi  model costs $139, which is $50 less than the 3G-enabled version of the e-book reader. According to Amazon’s press release, the new models have a more advanced electronic ink screen that provides more contrast. The new models are lighter, have more storage, offer faster page turns and many other features. Will this put the pressure back on Barnes and Noble to update the Nook? It wasn’t but a few weeks ago that the company lowered the price to take on its bricks-and-mortar rival Borders and its partner Kobo. CNET’s David Carnoy wrote about the change.

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