Gamification, the implementation of a certain game-like mechanisms to improve business, is a much wider trend than one would think. It has proven to be effective for many companies including startups that are based their offering wholly on this concept, and Google is the latest one that is trying to take advantage of it. The search giant is looking to become more social as it faces competition from Facebook, and in the latest twist it added a social badge system to Google News.

Google is experimenting with what one may call social news reading. The system tracks what users read while they’re logged into their Google account and assigns higher level badges to them the more they read. There about 500 topic-related badges available according to an official blog post by engineer Natasha Mohanty, and users can move up from the starting Bronze to the highest “Ultimate” badge.

Privacy plays a big role in Google’s new gamification revamp, too.

“Your badges are private by default, but if you want, you can share your badges with your friends,” Mohanty said. “Tell them about your news interests, display your expertise, start a conversation or just plain brag about how well-read you are.”

This is an important aspect because Google is doing more than just adding social features to its search engine. The company launched its own social network, Google+, only a few weeks ago, and if it plans on taking on Facebook it will have to handle the sort of issues the latter encountered with user privacy.

The new badge system may turn out to be successful, but there’s more to gamification than just that. In an interview with our news editor Kristen Nicole, Jon Radoff, author of Game On: Energize Your Business with Social Games, dismissed early analysis following bin Laden’s death that Al Qaeda uses gamification among its ranks–a claim supported by the psychological aspect highlighted in a keynote by Salesforce.com’s JP Rangaswami.

Not only large companies leverage this tech, however. DailyFeats and Lunch.com are two examples of web startups that do just that.