Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

Daily Deal Deflated: Groupon-Google Talks End

The acquisition talks between Google and Groupon have ended.

“It’s as over as these things get,” said one person close to the situation.

The reasons for the collapse of the discussions are not clear at this moment, but it seems to center on the decision by the social buying site to remain independent and perhaps go for an IPO.

There are sure to be conflicting stories over the next few days. Did Google get cold feet first? Was there a tussle over a breakup fee, in case of too much regulatory scrutiny? Were the cultural differences too much?

As BoomTown reported earlier today, the annual revenue run rate for Groupon is $2 billion.

Groupon gets to keep about half of that and the rest goes to the myriad merchants it strikes deals with worldwide.

That’s still tremendous growth since its founding in 2008.

And that’s why Silicon Valley search giant Google and Chicago-based start-up Groupon have been in talks in recent weeks about a mammoth acquisition at a $6 billion price tag.

Groupon had turned down a bid of $3 billion from Yahoo earlier this year.

Now, it’s likely that the company will begin a new funding process.

Its closest competitor–LivingSocial–just got $175 million in a strategic investment from Amazon.

Chicago Breaking Business first posted a report of the talks ending, also citing a desire to be independent on the part of Groupon.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik