Google has won a bidding war to acquire and hire the latest project by Digg founder, Kevin Rose, who will join the search giant.

Google is getting Rose along with his team at mobile app firm Milk, which is to close its only product Oink. It is understood that Facebook had also been in discussions with Rose, but Google won out.

According to AllThingD Google is paying around $15m with Rose and most of his small team joining Google.

“More people familiar with the deal said the rest of the Milk team is joining Google, with employees netting $1 million to $2 million each. although I’m still trying to nail down the value of the overall transaction. Milk investors are getting their initial investment money back plus a little extra, sources said,” AllThingsD reported.

Social app Oink was a local recommendations app and is described as a “way to rate and rank the things around you”. While it had only been around for three months it had high levels of engagement and hit around 150,000 downloads in its first month alone.

It is that kind of development that could prove valuable for Google’s social network, Google+, which has been consistently criticised for its low levels of engagement.

Last week Google claimed Google+ had 100 million active users although some say that it is a ghost town and that many users spend very little time on the scoial network.

Google almost had a deal with Rose back in 2008 when it attempted to buy Digg, but that deal fell apart.