• Bloomberg Businessweek et al, Tuesday, January 11, 2011 12:51 PM

With Google clear in its rearview mirror, Groupon just completed a $950 million round of financing and is already using the cash to expand.

Indeed, the hot social buying startup is buying India's SoSasta, Israel's Grouper, and South Africa's Twangoo for undisclosed sums. Each "will transition to the Groupon brand name and site design in coming months," the company says.

"The company is trying to maintain its lead over rivals such as LivingSocial, which received $183 million in an investment round led by Amazon.com Inc. last month," reports Bloomberg.

"With that kind of money in the bank, it isn't particularly challenging to get very acquisitive, and rolling up smaller, local players modeled after its own success happens to be a big part of Groupon's international growth strategy," writes TechCrunch. "Expect more of these."

"It signals that newly-resourced Groupon is well-stacked to go buying up the growing crop of smaller daily deals services around the world," seconds paidContent. "There is a veritable patchwork of such operators out there, many of which have been in play for investment by Amazon and eBay."

Investors in Groupon's latest round included Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and private-equity investor Silver Lake.

The involvement of such well-known venture capitalists shows that technology startups with high valuations are in demand among Silicon Valley investors, Mitch Kapor, a San Francisco-based investor, tells Bloomberg.

Notes VentureBeat: "Groupon has attracted its share of critics ... who question whether the company's growth is sustainable." In light of this new funding, however, "Clearly there are plenty of investors willing to bet that Groupon is still on its way up."

Still, cautions GigaOm: "The company now has some serious work to do in order to justify its funding." Really, "It's not just that Groupon has to show why it is worth an investment of close to $1 billion ... The two-year-old startup also has to show why it was right to turn down a $6-billion acquisition offer from Google."

Read the whole story at Bloomberg Businessweek et al »