Though the deal appears dead, that Google was reportedly willing to drop $6 billion on Groupon is reason enough for some to cry "bubble!" If Google had acquired Groupon, the deal would have been the
largest for a venture-backed company since 1999 and the third largest acquisition on record, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. "For anyone on the fence about whether today's sky-high valuations of
tech companies are more than a little reminiscent of the excesses of the dot-com era, this might tip you over," writes
The Wall Street Journal.
According to VentureSource, the only two
acquisitions larger than $5 billion are Cisco Systems' acquisition of communications products maker Cerent for $6.9 billion in 1999, and US West Media's acquisition of cable TV and Web services
provider Continental Cablevision for $11.8 billion in 1996. Adds The Journal, "The deal would have trumped the previous biggest acquisition since the turn of the century, Lucent Technologies' $4.8
billion dollar purchase of Chromatis Networks, which closed in June 2000." VentureSource doesn't count Google's $3.1 billion DoubleClick buy as a VC-backed acquisition, because the company had gone
public in 1998 and been taken private in 2005 by private equity firm Hellman & Friedman before Google got to it.
Read the whole story at Wall Street Journal »