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Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), which missed out on a major opportunity when it failed to acquire Groupon last fall, has purchased local deals aggregator The Dealmap for an undisclosed sum.
Launched in May 2010 to grab a piece of the multibillion-dollar local deals pie Groupon and LivingSocial baked, Dealmap has quickly become a popular source for local discounts, pushing out 400,000 deals to over 2 million users of its Web, mobile and other applications each day.
The Dealmap also boasts over 1 million iPhone and Android application installations. The San Francisco-based concern claims to get 85 million monthly visitors to its network of 50-plus partners for whom The Dealmap aggregates discounts.
These include local search and commerce providers CityGrid, Local.com, MerchantCircle, MyPoints, Savings.com and Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
A Google spokesperson was typically circumspect about what Dealmap would do for Google, telling eWEEK: “We are impressed with what The Dealmap team has accomplished and excited to welcome them to Google. We’ve been thrilled with the early success of our commerce offerings, and we think they can help us build even better products and services for consumers and merchants.”
The Dealmap said it will continue to operate as usual for now, though Google could make its Google Offers local deals service front and center of The Dealmap in the future.
Offers, built after Groupon spurned Google’s $6 billion acquisition offer, launched to solid results in Portland, Ore., as well as in New York and San Francisco last month. Google expects to support Offers with its Google Wallet mobile-payment service this summer.
The Dealmap in a blog post echoed a variation of what some 50 other startups have claimed in the last year or so after selling out to Google: The company provides the “the ideal platform to help us accelerate our growth and fulfill our mission.”
The Dealmap will piggyback on Google’s massive server network to put more deals in front of more consumers in the hope of getting them to buy a deal from one of its partners.
Finally, The Dealmap promised to continue supporting consumer access to local and daily deals through The Dealmap Website, mobile applications and daily email.