One of the fastest growing websites across the pond, BeatThatQuote.com was purchased by Google this morning for more than $61 million (GBP 37.7 million). It wasn't Google's first acquisition of the year (that was eBook Technologies) -- and it certainly won't be its last. The search company picked up 48 different properties in 2010 (from Aardvark to LabPixies to Quiksee) and it plans to be just as "aggressive" over 2011, according to an interview with David Lawee, Google's vice president of corporate development, in this past weekend's Wall Street Journal.
The acquisition of BeatThatQuote comes after a failed attempt to pick up Groupon last year for a reported $5 billion. A website that "helps its website visitors search, compare and apply for lower rates and cheaper prices on a different array of products including financial, insurance, legal servces, utilities and shopping," according to a quick post on TheNextWeb, BeatTheQuote is currently bringing in more visitors than Facebook. "Google is set to utilize BeatThatQuote's technology to better deliver deals and financial comparisons, perhaps integrating it into its new deals service."
The purchase makes sense. Google's new deals site is meant to compete with Groupon, which is rapidly expanding, and the company has a history of successfully integrating acquired talent and products into new spin-off services. Applied Semantics, acquired in April 2003 for more than $100 million, led to AdSense, Google's popular (and multi-billion dollar revenue generating) advertising platform for Web developers, for example. And picking up Keyhole, Inc. the following year allowed Google to make much-lauded improvements to its Maps technology.