In other Groupon news (hey, there's $6 billion at stake!), the social deal leader is about to debut a new service that will "dramatically increase" the number of businesses offering deals on its site, and give users new tools to find deals multiple times per day. That's what Groupon founder and CEO Andrew Mason tells The Wall Street Journal, anyway. "We want to do for buying at local businesses what Amazon did for buying online," Mason tells The Journal. "Up until now, one of Groupon's biggest problems has been a large backlog of merchants that want to …

Amid rapid growth and fantastic buy-out offers, Groupon has somehow found time to open new offices, and acquire local marketing services startup Ludic Labs. San Mateo-based Ludic Labs has produced Offerfoundry.com -- a self-service advertising and deals platform for local businesses -- and local interest community Diddit.com. As a part of the acquisition, Dr. Brian Totty, CEO of Ludic Labs, will take on the role of head of engineering for the daily deal site, overseeing international product development and innovation. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but according to CrunchBase, Ludic Labs was operating on $5 …

With Google and Groupon engaged in acquisition talks, the search giant's investors are expressing concerns about the proposed purchase price (north of $5 billion, last we checked), as well as the long-term viability of social deals. "Google's investors ... seemed focused on Groupon's valuation, which was estimated at $1.4 billion during its last fund-raising round in April," reports The New York Times. "Google's bid carries a fourfold premium to that." As such, "On Tuesday, some Google investors wondered if the company was paying too steep a price." As a result, shares in Google fell 4.5%, to $555.71. In a …