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Would this mean their army of Ruby on Rails developers being laid off and replaced with a team of many fewer Google engineers? edit: sure it is a bit offensive

• sulla 16y ago
  Pretty sure that sales, marketing & brand is what's the most valuable here.
• mkramlich 16y ago
  from what I've seen of their UI and feature breadth, a site like Groupon should not require many web developers. It's so limited and "canned" in it's look. Now having several smart engineers to help make it highly performant and scale up -- that would be useful, and would be something Google could obviously help with.
  • jaredmck 16y ago
    Groupon doesn't have that many developers- it's sales in which they have an army of employees. The most recent number I've heard is 2,500. Groupon is not a tech company, it's a sales company. Lefkofsky and Keywell (the original investors who often are referred to as "founders") continually bring a slight bit of tech into old industries and then throw tons of salespeople into them. Highly doubt the profits will last.
    • mkramlich 16y ago
      sounds like that aspect is a good fit for Google then, since Google is strong in tech but weak in sales and customer service. I think $5b is overpaying. But at a much lower price point I can see how acquiring them would make sense, because of this tech-needs-sales&service fit.