If you haven’t used it, you’ve probably heard of it. If you haven’t heard of it, get out from under that rock and hit up Groupon.com, the daily deal site that’s been taking the world by storm. Groupon is one of the world’s fastest growing businesses, offering its users a new deal every day on goods and services for 50% to 90% off. Needless to say, in today’s economic climate, Groupon has found itself one heck of a niche.
You’d think a money-saving site like Groupon would recognize a great deal when it hit it in the face. However, this turned out not to be the case when Groupon CEO and founder Andrew Mason turned down Google’s $6 billion offer to buy the company. While Mason is notorious for his prankster ways, this is no laughing matter. Declining not only $6 billion, but also the tech services and network of the largest search engine in the world, most believe, could not have been a smart move for the internet-based thrift site. So will Groupon, like so many predecessors, flail, having turned down an offer of a lifetime? Or, like Facebook, grow to an extent beyond Google and all the search engines in the world could fathom? Only time will tell. Click. Tock. Click. Tock.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-06/groupon-prankster-mason-not-joking-in-spurning-google-s-6-billion-offer.html