Silicon Beat reports that Google has acquired Dodgeball.com, the New York-based mobile social networking site founded by grad students at NYU.

Clay Shirky, a contributor to Corante's Many 2 Many blog, is clearly excited about the deal (wOOt! wOOt!):

"Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert were students of mine at ITP. I’ve watched them build Dodgeball over the last few years, which was both inspiring and instructional. Given the level of thought and effort they’ve put into it, this is really good news, for them and for Google."

The acquisition is an interesting one for Google, Shirky notes, since it means that the company could be attempting to reconcile two completely different views of the world: an information-centric view and a social-centric view.