Rumors this morning are pointing to an acquisition of the coupon site by Google.
After failed attempts by Yahoo (YHOO), Groupon appears to be in negotiations to sell itself to Google (GOOG) according to a report this morning by AllThingsD. The deal and price aren’t set but numbers north of the “$2-3 billion” that Yahoo offered are being thrown around.
Google isn’t new to the neighborhood space. Besides previously making an attempt to buy Yelp (who compete with Groupon via their local Daily Deals), Google has a litany of homegrown and purchased location-aware products around Google Places.
The social coupon site Groupon would help in Google’s attempt to become more social by providing a gateway to bringing Groupon’s huge userbase into Google’s location-aware services. It would also be a platform on which Google could sell its new local geo-targeted local ads against.
Google Ventures also backs a localized Foursquare/gaming company SCVNGR.