Google Acquires Fridge: Groups For Google+ Incoming

Google has acquired social networking site Fridge, a group coordination and photo sharing tool, and intends to integrate its functionality into Google+. Like the new Google system, Fridge allowed users to sort their friends and relationships into different groups, then share messages, photos, videos and event suggestions with them easily.

Part of Fridge's appeal was the granularity of control possible for customizing what each group could see. As well as segmenting updates between the different groups, it was possible to set different names and profile photos that each group would see. A shared calendar, similar to what Facebook offers, was also offered, together with poll support and a bookmarklet tool that could instantly share what page you were looking at.

"Fridge will be shutting down but the core tenets will stay on in Google+" company co-founder Austin Chang confirmed. "Groups for Google+" have apparently been referred to internally at Google as "shared circles" and on the roadmap for some time.

Fridge had previously warned users that they would have to export their data by July 19 or see it deleted, though the connection with Google was not confirmed until now. That deadline has now been extended to August 20.

[via AllThingsD]