Acquisition of the year: Groupon sold to Google.

Groupon will allegedly be purchased by Google

The acquisition estimations vary between $ 2.5 to $ 6 billion, which exceeds at least twice the price of YouTube, bought by the most popular search engine company some time ago. Apart from YouTube, Google has purchased quite a few remarkable ventures, such as Andorid, Double Click, AdMob, Picasa.

It would be extra thing to describe what Groupon is, if you didn't know what would you be doing here? If some businesses sink down during the recession, some become all the rage. The popularity of Groupon over the two years of its existence never doubled or tripled - it has always been growing tenfold or higher.

Google needs badly the flavor of social networking, together with Groupon it will have better chances to out perform Facebook in this field.

It's all about the one-spot trade. Like the shopping mall is better than small boutiques scattered throughout the town, the collection of different services provided by the same vendor are better than searching for this and that.

ZDNet’s Larry Dignan shared his thoughts on the Google-Groupon rumors a couple weeks ago, noting that:

Google is your local yellow pages in many cases. Now let’s layer Groupon into the equation. You find that restaurant on Google, you get a nice map for directions, you get a few reviews and you can hand out a coupon for drinks or some discount… For Google, Groupon would be very sticky. And Groupon brings a dash of social networking into the equation. For Google, Groupon is another hook into local commerce and advertising—and a damn good one at that.

So running a daily-deal website is a way to become overnight billionaire or a millionaire, taking into account all these clones.