“…we’re excited to announce that we’ve been acquired by Google” is the proud announcement from the DailyDeal founders on their homepage (“Our best deal yet”).
The far better deal, which would have been an exit to LivingSocial, seems not to have materialized. Instead, Google has jumped in to grab DailyDeal and will sooner or later combine it into Google Offers.
TheNextWeb goes straight to the point:
“With reports that Google’s Groupon competitor Google Offers has gotten off to a slow start, the company has announced another acquisition in the Daily Deals space, snapping up German deal site DailyDeal.
The Berlin-based deals website was founded in September 2009 by brothers Fabian and Ferry Heilemann, with reported sales of 252,000 vouchers in the first three months of 2011. The company has already expanded outside of Germany to Austria and Switzerland, with the Austrian website already surpassing Groupon in the country – according to Fabian Heilemann.
The company has announced plans to expand to a wider European audience, with Scandinavia, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg the next possible markets. As a result, the company expects to record around €40 million in 2011 alone."
Following the failed attempts from Twitter and Facebook to get into the daily deal space, it can’t be taken as a given that Google will find long term success in this market.
In this regard, we might assume that Groupon could be celebrating along with the DailyDeal founders and investors – see the direct traffic comparison.
For Rebate Networks, who were invested in both DailyDeal and LivingSocial (German post), this exit solves a conflict of interest. The sale also brings additional cash for the ongoing ambitions for Dealgecco.
Bottom line is that the DailyDeal exit could be seen as similar to the exits from Amiando (to Xing, German post) and Brands4Friends (to eBay). At a minimum, it’s a great boost to the CVs of the founders.
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
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