Groupon may be much more popular and wide spread as compared to Google Offers, but the search engine giant is leaving no stone unturned to give a tough fight to Groupon. There were reports of late that Google Offers had a slow start and its revenue was declining. But, Google chose the backdoor entry for Google Offers by announcing yet another acquisition in the Daily Deals space. This time its German deal site DailyDeal. On the monetary terms, there was no disclosure made at the time of writing.
Google Offers has been promoting offers only in U.S., amongst a few selected states only in the North American side. Being available to only a number of customers, it was expected that it would be a hit, but in the first three months of operation, Google Offers had a decline in revenue. According to a report by deal aggregator Yipit, comparing July to August, the percentage of daily deals advertised on the company increased by 22, but the revenue drop was 23 percent. This was for New York, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon in totality.
Google with this acquisition has set it goals right and its intention would be now clear that it wants to move Google Offers to Europe with buying in a company which has is well established and it could be an effective step to outperform Groupon and LivingSocial in a number of countries.
Talking about DailyDeal, the company’s founders seem to be quite happy with the deal as they had a detailed statement on the DailyDeal website. The statement had a briefing about the company’s history and then noted that they were excited to announce the acquisition news as they see it as an opportunity to connect businesses with consumers on a larger scale. The duo founders had moved to a platform wherein they are being trusted by many businesses as well as consumers. They are even hopeful that their pairing with the Google Offers team, they would be able to provide even greater deals to consumers.
Google on its part has already acquired The Dealmap, Daily Deals aggregator. The Dealmap was a web portal designed to collate and showcase the huge number of deals advertised by the large number of Daily Deals sites in China.
DailyDeal was founded late in 2009 by brothers Fabian and Ferry Heilemann. The sales was reported for 252,000 vouchers in the first three months of 2011. It has even proved its potential by moving out of Germany to Austria and Switzerland in no time. Google would definitely enjoy offering more in the Austrian territory as Fabian Heilemann noted that according to him, DailyDeal website has already surpassed Groupon in Austria.
Detailing about their future plans, the expansion would be to a much wider European audience, with Scandinavia, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg the next possible markets. This could result in the expectations of the company to post a record of around €40 million in 2011 alone.
However, for Groupon, this acquisition can be a problematic one as Google can let its support out for DailyDeal which would help them in achieving dual goals and Groupon would not want to see them succeeding, but as competition has always helped innovation, it is possible that it could happen this time too.