Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, has been hired by Google according to sources close to the situation. In an interesting turn of events, yesterday Oink, the food-and-drink finding App for the iPhone started by Kevin, has shut down. He left a message on their website announcing their exodus with no mention of being hired by Google. The sources emphasized that Google is not "acqhiring" Milk/Oink, but Rose and some others from the company have been hired. Kevin is a very active and impressive angel investor, putting money into companies like Fab, Zynga, Ngmoco, Foursquare and Twitter. He also has a very loyal online following that he picked up from his days as a host on TechTV and the pod-cast Diggnation.

Could this be a move to catapult Google + into the mainstream? Certainly is a possibility since the project has been described as a dud. Rose’s first day at Google is to be this Monday.

Via: AllthingsD