A report has sprung up suggesting that Google is on the brink of buying Valve, the owner of online games platform Steam and developer behind Half Life.

The report comes from The Inquirer (which we picked up via Develop) that cites "well placed sources" as the provider of the information.

It fits with a comment from Valve's director of marketing, Doug Lombardi, who recently said that if anyone is interested in buying Valve it is "happy to have that conversation."

There has also been recent chatter about how a decisive move into gaming would be a good move for Google. Given the company's current line of expertise, acquiring the strongest online gaming platform out there on the Internet would seem like a good place to start.

Google already has Lively, an online virtual world. It hasn't been a massive success, but integrating games distribution into it, a la Home, would make for an interesting proposition...

At the time of press, no comment was available from Valve on the subject.

^{Source: The Inquirer via Develop Magazine}