Groupon...Is It Worth It?

For a while now when I go on certain websites I a see a little ad on the bottom for this website called groupon.com. I was curious but never checked it out, but maybe I should have. Groupon is a website that allows you to buy deals on things. Like buying $20 worth of food for $10. Good Idea right? Well it is and thats why there are now copycat companies popping up.

Groupon was started in 2008 in Chicago and then expanded to markets in Boston, New York, and Toronto. Now they serve over 150 markets in North America and 100 markets in Europe and are also serving 35 million users in Asia and South America. In about 2 1/2 years this company has seen a tremendous growth. In December of 2010 Groupon turned down an offer of $6 billion dollars from Google to buy them out opting to stay independent. some may have thought this was a stupid idea but it may have worked in their favor because now they are in talks about becoming public and their IPO could be worth up to $25 billion. Thats a major jump from the $6 billion Google was trying to offer.

Whose to say though what's going to happen in the future. Although the idea of investing in such a company sounds good there are still some hold up possible investors are having. Especially with all these copycats like LivingSocial, SocialBuy, or TwoBuckDuck just to name a few, there is no telling what's really going to happen. Although Groupon has the edge right now anyone of these other companies can come up and take its spot. So begins the fight for the top spot in the deal game.