Monday, August 01, 2011

Google Aquires Dealmap


Dealmap's biggest deal of today was selling itself to Google.

Websites offering daily deals and coupons have been one of the biggest trends in the location sector for a couple of years now. Google has been pretty keen to get into this market, which has so far been dominated by Groupon.

However Google has, until now, been painfully slow in rolling out its own Google Offers site. Google Offers launched in April promising daily offers - but the deals were initially only available in Portland, Oregon. Since then Google have rolled out the service to other areas but it is still limited to New York, San Francisco, Oakland and Portland.

By acquiring Deal Map Google can now access Dealmap's deal exchange distribution network and presumably hopes to tap into Dealmap's over 2 million users.

Google is not the only big player to have had an eye on Dealmap. Back in March Dealmap signed a deal with Bing to display deals on the homepage of m.bing.com.

For now Dealmap says it will continue as a distinct service. However my guess is that at some point in the future Dealmap and Google Offers will morph into one product (probably called Google Offers).

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