WebProNews

Tag: DailyDeal

  • Google Acquired 79 Companies In Fiscal Year 2011

    If you’re having trouble sleeping this weekend, I suggest pouring over the entire 99-page report of Google’s 10-K for the 2011 fiscal year. It. Is. Dry.

    However, the crew over at 9to5Google are more dedicated Google readers than I am and, from the document, tallied up that Google added 79 companies to their empire for the everyday low price of $2 billion. Some of the companies you might recognize: Motorola (this one’s still pending approval), ITA Software, AdMob, On2 Technologies, and a new office building in NYC (that’s kind of an unofficial acquisition, right?). In the document, Google claims that “These acquisitions generally enhance the breadth and depth of our expertise in engineering and other functional areas, our technologies, and our product offerings.”

    The 9to5Google folks pointed out some other acquisitions that I didn’t find in the document: Zagat, DailyDeal, Dealmap, and Admeld.

    With all those acquisitions happening, they’re not just gonna run themselves, are they? No, they’re not, so Google brought some more hands on deck in 2011 – over 32,000 pairs of hands, in fact, that were connected to 32,000 new employees.

    And if you think this is big, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet because Google was clear about their plans for this year:

    Our plans to continue to invest in systems, facilities, and infrastructure, increase our hiring, provide competitive compensation programs, and continue our current pace of acquisitions.

    Place your bets now on which company will be carrying the Google banner by this time next year.

  • Google Buys DailyDeal

    While others in the space seem to have scaled back a bit in the daily deals department (see Facebook and Yelp), Google continues to amp up its efforts.

    Since news that Facebook was ending its Deals offering (though keeping check-in deals) and Yelp was cutting back its Deals positions, Google has plugged Google Offers on the Google home page and launched the product in more markets.

    Now, Google has purchased DailyDeal, a daily deals service from Germany. A message on the DailyDeal site says:

    When DailyDeal was founded in Berlin back in December 2009, there was just two of us. Since then, we have seen tremendous growth, as people throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland have used DailyDeal to find local deals on their favorite restaurants, travel destinations, entertainment venues and retail outlets.

    Our team has grown too, and with it, our vision for DailyDeal. We see great opportunity to better connect businesses with consumers on a much larger scale, and we have found a team that shares our vision.

    That’s why we’re excited to announce that we’ve been acquired by Google! What began as a two-person startup less than two years ago has transformed into a trusted platform to connect businesses with consumers. By combining our expertise with the Offers team at Google, we hope to expand our efforts to provide even greater deals to consumers.

    The DailyDeal team

    On top of that, while the official announcement has yet to come out, Google Wallet is said to be launching today. This product should be a key weapon in Google’s arsenal of products that can help Google Offers thrive.