DailyDeal site unleashes itself from Google
The founders of the German daily deals site have bought back the company from Google.
DailyDeal is now back in the hands of its original owners.
The German daily deals site broke the news on its home page today, announcing that founders Fabian and Ferry Heilemann repurchased the site from Google.
A Google translated version of the deal offered the full scoop:
We are pleased to inform you today that we bought back the company as founder and CEO of Daily Deal and Google will now continue on their own. Daily Deal will of course continue the usual services and exciting offers -- just as we have done in the past. In addition, we will expand in the coming months in new business.
For the Daily Deal team, we thank all of our users, business partners, and employees for their loyalty and support over the last three years. We are looking forward to what lies ahead of us!
Fabian and Ferry Heilemann
Founder and CEO
Daily Deal
Google bought DailyDeal in September 2011 to better compete against Groupon, especially in the European market. Groupon holds a presence in Europe, though it's faced recent challenges drumming up business in the region.
DailyDeal has run into some of those same challenges, according to VentureBeat. In the face of the declining daily deals business abroad, Google laid off some DailyDeal staffers last September and reportedly wanted to get rid of the site altogether.
On its end, Google is still keeping up the daily deals fight. The search giant today incorporated a daily deal feature into its AdWords platform, according to media news site The Medium. Previously available as a beta, the new feature can now be used by the full range of advertisers who tap into AdWords.
DailyDeal isn't standing still either.
A spokesman for the site sent the following statement to Silicon Allee:
In the future, we will continue pursuing couponing as a business model and expanding our strong market position. With 31,000 deals and 4.6 million coupons sold summing up to a total value of 260 million euros, DailyDeal has evolved to a leading couponing portal in D-A-CH (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) in the last three years. Within the last year we have grown by 25 percent compared to 2011.
Building on the existing assets (such as employees, customer base, merchant pool), we will also develop other sustainable business models. The latter will be presented to you within the next few weeks.
Despite the change in ownership, DailyDeal will continue to be solidly financed just as before.