Yelp and Google? Um, nevermind |
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That potential Google-Yelp deal, the one that had everyone buzzing last week, appears to have fizzled. Yelp has walked away from a $550 million-plus acquisition offer from Google, according to a TechCrunch report, citing multiple anonymous sources. Michael Arrington reports that Yelp plans to remain independent.
No matter how close it came to happening, the episode demonstrated that Google has regained its appetite for deals with the potential to roil the rest of the industry. A Yelp acquisition would have solidified Google's position in local search, filling out a key part of its strategy for building its business from desktop computers to the cloud to mobile devices and even store windows.
Yelp or not, it will be interesting to see how regulators in the U.S. and Europe treat the next big Google deal that comes before them for approval. Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith, fresh off a favorable outcome in the company's latest European antitrust tussle, said last week, "We certainly do believe that competitors with high market share should have to follow the same rules that we do when we have high market share."
And Google is clearly on the U.S. Justice Department's radar, thanks in no small part to its failed plan to partner with Yahoo as a foil to Microsoft.
At any rate, the bottom line with this one is that it's looking like Yelp remains independent, for now.
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