Google Inc. has agreed to acquire Aardvark, a social search engine, as it continues to penetrate the social media business.

Technology blog TechCrunch earlier reported Google acquired Aardvark for $50 million. The company later confirmed the acquisition, but declined to provide additional details.

Aardvark, founded in 2007 by former Google employees, allows users to ask questions online using normal language. The site then provides customized answers sent directly from real-life friends or friends of friends in real time.

The Aardvark service appears to complement Buzz, which Google launched yesterday. (Video: How does Google Buzz work?) It will provide another social Web service as Google tries to get a handle on the flood of real-time user-generated content that is the specialty of Facebook and Twitter.

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