Google, GroupOn: Integration Will Be Key

Image by earcos via FlickrThis is not a merger, this is an acquisition, but it feels like a merger. Granted this is no AOL Time Warner - thank God - but it feels like a merger more so than the YouTube acquisition felt. The YouTube acquisition felt like an acquisition, a big acquisition but still an acquisition. This feels like a merger.

Google, GroupOn: Marissa Mayer's Stalking Of Andrew Mason

Image by jdlasica via FlickrAndrew Mason first spotted Marissa Mayer at South By Southwest. He did not think much of it. He did not think someone like Marissa Mayer might actually know who he was. Only two years before he had been eating Ramen noodles. He could still feel the taste of Ramen in his mouth.

Google, GroupOn: Say No The First Time

Image by jdlasica via FlickrHotmail was hot. So Bill Gates wanted to buy it. The joke in the industry for a decade and a half had been that Microsoft was always one step behind.

Sabeer Bhatia was summoned for some face time with Bill G. Bill Gates offered $200 million.

"Can I sleep on it?" Sabeer Bhatia replied. He flew back home to the Bay Area where he lived.

Google, GroupOn: It's The G Factor

Image by earcos via FlickrI am going to post a hypothesis. The hypothesis is that GroupOn always wanted to get bought, and it wanted to get bought by Google. From. Day. One. GroupOn plotted for this day to come before its inception.

Why do I say that?

Google, GroupOn: GroupOn Perhaps Was Not The Next Big Thing

Image via WikipediaApple and Microsoft were born around the same time. They were not at peace. Netscape came along. Microsoft killed Netscape. Google offered to sell itself to Yahoo. Yahoo refused. A few years later Bill Gates offered to buy Google "at any price." Google refused. Google tried to buy or bury Facebook. Facebook survived. Facebook tried to buy Twitter. Twitter refused. So Facebook hunkered down and "learned" as much as possible from Twitter. Facebook has tried to buy FourSquare, more recently it has tried to bury it.

See, there is that buzz factor. The company that had the crown seat in the buzz kingdom until recently is able to spot the next taker and gets uncomfortable.

Google, GroupOn: Google Just Got Offline

Image by ifindkarma via FlickrThis is Google getting offline. That is a big jump. I hear GroupOn has a salesforce. Google has not had that. This is Google now getting high touch. High tech is no longer enough. Online only is no longer enough.

Google went offline before it went into hardware. That's significant. A company like Google getting offline also shows how mainstream the web has become. The term In Real Life no longer applies. What do you mean in real life? The web is as real as it gets.

Local, social, mobile, global.

Google, GroupOn: Google Could Not Have Avoided The Deal

Image via CrunchBase

TechCrunch: Why Google Hearts Groupon: Groupon is the clear market leader in the fastest growing new category on the Internet .... “I think the way Google will evolve is they will want to control everything significant on the Internet.” ....... Google Places is increasingly front and center on the main search results page for local searches, and VP Marissa Mayer recently switched from Search to now running Location and Local Services. She is known to be a big fan of Groupon .... Through its online-to-offline coupons, Groupon has figured out how to track that last mile in local online commerce between the ad and customers showing up at a store..... Google could start showing Groupon deals as tags on local searches or within Google Maps. The ability to add deals to their Places pages could make Places more appealing to local businesses as well. ..... scaling the business from one which deals with a few hundred businesses per day to tens or hundreds of thousands .... Groupon still requires a large local sales force to manage these deals, and an army of copy writers to make the deals appealing.

This is a case of the dog finally catching up with the car. Google might have missed out on social, but it tried extra hard to get local and location right. That begs the question, Facebook refused to be bought for a billion, and now its market value is 50 billion, did GroupOn just miss out?