AllThingsD first reported that Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, will be joining Google this Monday.

This comes a day after Kevin’s app company, Milk, Inc. shut down their only app, Oink. The report says that Google will not acquire the company but likely take on some of the employees from the company.

TechCrunch adds the Oink team will be involved in Google’s social efforts. TechCrunch also is claiming that Google paid $15 million to $30 million for the company, which seems to go against the AllThingsD report of Google not acquiring the company but rather just hiring the staff.

Google declined to comment on the situation when we asked them, they told us “we have nothing to share at this time.” There are no status updates from Kevin Rose on Google+, Twitter or in the comments on the story on Digg.

Postscript: Kevin Rose announced on his Google+ page on March 16th at noon that the “Milk crew” will be “joining Google.” the crew includes Kevin Rose, Daniel Burka, Chris Hutchins and Joshua Lane.

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Google

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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