Groupon Turns down a 6 Billion Dollar Offer From Google. Why you ask? I'm asking that too!

According to Bloomberg, GroupOn – the group-buying, daily deal website – recently turned down an offer from Google for 6 Billion dollars.

In my ever so humble opinion, I find this move to be absolutely crazy!

To get an offer for 6 billion dollars on your deal of the day website that is only two years old – and turn it down…

WTF?  (Excuse my abbreviated language.)

I am not going to be too critical of Andrew Mason’s (CEO and founder of Groupon) decision, as Google hasn’t yet offered me 6 Billion dollars for one of my websites and businesses.  So I really have no room to talk.  If I were in his position, hypothetically speaking, I imagine that I would probably have slept another night on that offer before turning it down.

I would have also taken a look at some case studies where businesses were offered top dollar to sell out only to turn it down and eventually lose value.  Yes, this has happened quite a few times, especially around the dot com bust.

Just think about some of the top dot com busts the internet has witnessed;

WebVan
Pets.com
Kozmo.com
Flooz.com
eToys.com
boo.com
MVP.com
Go.com
Kibu.com
Govworks.com.

I imagine some of these business owners might be looking back wishing that they would have sold their business as soon as physically possible…  Maybe not though.

I would hate to one day add your website to that list Andrew Mason.  I would also absolutely love for you to prove me wrong and continue your unprecedented growth and continue to build your company into an even bigger monster.

It is the end of the year though, so I imagine that Google is trying to get some cash off of their books before January 1st, 2011.  Who knows, Google might be willing to drop 10 Billion on Groupon.

I do know that with services like HC Consulting Group’s Daily Deal software, DailyDealBuilder, new Daily Deal websites and companies are popping up nearly every day and are causing major competition for Groupon.  Facebook has already been discussing rolling out their version of a Daily Deal type service.

I can’t give you an answer, nor do I know why GroupOn turned the offer down.  I am very excited for them as a company though because they surely must have plans of grandeur to take over the world one deal at a time in one city at a time.

Feel free to share your comments and thoughts below with us and go ahead and visit http://groupon.com to see which businesses arm they twisted today for a deal.

Marc Horne
HC Consulting Group