Mountain View, California — Despite hordes of new entrants, the daily deals category is still sizzling, as global search engine giant Google Inc., in a strategic move has acquired The Dealmap, a deals aggregation service that shows on a Google Maps-powered map just where you can find all the daily deals in your geographic locality, expanding further into a potentially lucrative daily deals market now dominated by the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial.
The acquisition was confirmed Monday; the terms were not revealed. But Google, which has made initial attempts into e-commerce through Google Offers, as well as mobile payments, said it was “impressed with what The Dealmap team has accomplished and excited to welcome them to Google.”
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“We have been delighted with the early success of our commerce offerings, and we think they can help us build even better products and services for consumers and merchants,” Google said in a statement.
Since last year, Google has been concentrating a lot on the intersections between location and commerce. Late in 2010, the company toyed around with the Yelp-like Hotpot. Around the same time, it also reportedly made a pass at Groupon in the form of a $5.3 billion acquisition offer.
The Dealmap claims to have more than 2 million users for its mobile, Web, social and e-mail products. In addition, those users have downloaded its applications on iPhone and Android devices more than 1 million times, and 85 million monthly visitors to its DealExchange distribution network.
Interestingly, it numbers more than 50 companies as commercial distribution partners, including Microsoft’s Bing, CityGrid, Local.com, MerchantCircle, MyPoints, Savings.com, SuperMedia, and T-Mobile. Besides, it lists over 150 affiliate agreements with local and daily deal providers. Over 500 developers are taking advantage of its DealExchange API.
In a post on TheDealMap’s blog, the team writes:
We believe Google provides the ideal platform to help us accelerate our growth and fulfill our mission. We’re passionate about helping people save money while having great local experiences, and in Google we’ve found the perfect partner that shares this passion, as well as our vision and strategy. We believe that joining Google will help us innovate in new and unexplored areas of commerce.
For the time being, we will continue to support The Dealmap’s core products and partner services. People will still be able to access local and daily deals through The Dealmap website, mobile apps, and daily email, and we’ll continue supporting The Dealmap API and feeds for existing sourcing and distribution partners. As we’re ready to share more about integration and transition plans, we’ll update our partners and consumers on progress and any news.
Moreover, The DealMap claims it makes over 400,000 local and daily deals available each day from over 450 unique sources, adding up to $10 million in savings available each day. The company concludes, like so many other previous Google targets, that its new owner provides the ideal platform to help us accelerate our growth and fulfill our mission. Joining Google will help us innovate in new and unexplored areas of commerce.
Google of course unleashed its own deal service earlier this year with Google Offers, which is only available in a few markets thus far. Google also launched Google+, its new social network, which should be quite helpful in pushing any of its other services.
The Dealmap, formed in May 2010, aggregates offers from numerous daily deal websites, and users who check-in to get access to deals from 450 unique sources that are organized by location. Users who log in via the website or mobile apps find deals in their area.
Finally, Google plans to attach The Dealmap to its commerce teams and move the company’s employees to its Mountain View, Calif., campus. The acquisition should bolster Google’s efforts to tap the local daily deals market and compete with the current leader, Groupon.
“As we are ready to share more about integration and transition plans, we will update our partners and consumers on progress and any news,” The Dealmap added.
Here is what The Dealmap looks like right now for San Francisco; it is easy to visualize what Google might be able to do with it in the near future:
Surprisingly, the daily deals sector has enormously swelled in recent years. There are more than 400 providers now and the industry might generate as much as $6.1 billion in annual gross revenue by 2015, according to BIA/Kelsey, which tracks local advertising.
Lastly, this purchase comes after Google’s $6 billion bid for Groupon was famously rebuffed last December. By the next month, though, Google was in the process of rolling out its own Groupon competitor, Google Offers, which is now live in New York; Portland, Oregon; San Francisco and Oakland, California. The service will also be available soon in Boston, Austin, Denver, Seattle and Washington, D.C.