News

Google, Living Social make daily deals of their own

August 2, 2011

Daily deal sites are becoming the deals of the day. Sci-Tech Today is reporting Google acquired The Dealmap yesterday. The Dealmap is a daily deal aggregator that collects local discounts and offers and places them on a Google map so shoppers can find promotions nearby. No terms for the deal were announced.

According to The Dealmap, since launching in May 2010, the site has attracted two million users, seen its smartphone application installed on more than one million devices and had more than 85 million monthly visitors to its partner network.

On a post on The Dealmap's official blog, the company said it will continue to support its core products and partner services and consumers will still be able to access local and daily deals through its website, mobile apps and daily email. It also said API and feeds for existing partners would continue to be supported.

Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, commenting on The Dealmap deal told Sci-Tech Today, "Google can raise The Dealmap's profile significantly because of its size and structure. This puts Dealmap on the map. It makes Google a competitor in this space and creates real problems for Groupon, which is trying to go public, by creating the specter of a large competitor right when Groupon is going to be asking for money."

Enderle added that this big opportunity for Google may scare a lot of retailers. He said Dealmap and Groupon-type companies could be the Costcos of tomorrow.

"It's a huge potential retail displacement," Enderle said.

In the same article, Sci-Tech Today also reports that U.S. daily deal site LivingSocial has acquired TicketMonster, a South Korean social-commerce website featuring daily and instant deals on travel and events. TicketMonster reaches more than two million members in Korea and Malaysia.

"TicketMonster is one of Korea's most recognized and trusted brands in the nascent daily-deal industry, and we are excited to bring them into the LivingSocial family," said Tim O'Shaughnessy, CEO and cofounder of LivingSocial, in the article.

For more on this topic, visit our Online Retailing research center.