MUMBAI: Search engine giant Google has acquired social media marketing firm Wildfire which powers social media marketing for over 16,000 businesses, including 30 of the top 50 global brands. It offers a complete Social Marketing Suite.

While financial details of the deal have not been disclosed Google is estimated to have paid about $250 million. Wildfire counts Summit Partners, TransLink Capital, fbFund, 500 Startups, SoftTech VC, and Felicis Ventures as its investors.

Following the acquisition, the Wildfire team will be absorbed into Google.

In early 2012, Wildfire became the first social media marketing company to have a software platform that integrates directly with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

"We‘re happy to share that the Wildfire team will be joining Google. Their co-founders, Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard, launched their startup just four years ago. Since then, they and their team have built a service that helps businesses like Virgin, Cirque du Soleil, Gilt Group and Spotify manage their social efforts across numerous social websites. It‘s a platform for brands to manage their pages, apps, tweets, videos, sponsorships, ads, promotions and more, all in one place," Google said in a statement.

"With Wildfire, we‘re looking forward to creating new opportunities for our clients to engage with people across all social services. We believe that better content and more seamless solutions will help unlock the full potential of the web for people and businesses."

"Today, we are about to start a new chapter of our story and we couldn‘t be more excited to share the news: Wildfire is joining Google! We truly could not think of a more perfect home for Wildfire. It makes us so happy to know that joining with Google will make it easier for us to realize our vision of changing the way the world markets and enable us to live up to our commitment to make Wildfire an incredible place for our team and our customers," Wildfire added.