Google bolsters Offers with DailyDeal purchase
The search giant has acquired German company DailyDeal for an undisclosed sum. DailyDeal operates in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Google has acquired a German daily-deals provider as it tries to bolster its service to compete against a growing number of companies.
DailyDeal, which offers daily deals in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, announced on its site that it has been acquired by Google for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition came rather quickly for DailyDeal: the company was founded in December 2009.
Google's acquisition should help improve its own daily-deals service, Offers. That service, which launched earlier this year, is currently in beta. The offering, which sends deals to users each day via e-mail, is available in a small number of cities right now, including New York, Boston, and San Francisco. Google plans to slowly roll it out to other cities, including San Diego and Atlanta, in the near future.
In an e-mailed statement to CNET, a Google spokesperson didn't specifically mention Offers, but did say that the DailyDeal acquisition is designed to offer a more well-rounded service to consumers.
"As more and more people go online to find the latest, most relevant deals, we're exploring new ways to help consumers get the best local deals out there," the spokesperson told CNET. "The DailyDeal team has an incredible track record in this space, and we look forward to working with them."
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DailyDeal was similarly tight-lipped on what it might do at Google, but the company did say that it will be "combining our expertise with the Offers team at Google." It also appears that the company will continue to operate in Europe.
Even with DailyDeal's help, Google is facing serious competition in the daily-deals industry. Groupon, the dominant player in the space, is flanked by a host of companies, including LivingSocial and AmazonLocal, and all that competition is aiming for the same market.
But if it were up to Google, the daily-deals space would look much different. Last year, the company reportedly tried to acquire Groupon for between $5 billion and $6 billion, but Groupon decided to go it alone.
Google's DailyDeal acquisition follows Groupon's own push into the German market. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission this year, Groupon revealed that it bought German daily-deal provider CityDeal last year for $204.2 million.