Group purchases site Groupon Inc., which recently entered the Israeli market through the acquisition of Grouper Ltd. for $10 million, is going to war. Sources inform ''Globes'' that several Israeli group purchases sites, which aggregate online deals, have received an official letter from Groupon demanding that the remove the deals from the general list site.
Groupon believes that this aggregation hurts the company's brand and the deals' visibility, and was carried out without the approval or cooperation between the parties. The sources added that Groupon threatens to sue websites that do not do as asked, and continue to publish Groupon's daily offers.
The various aggregation sites, Tavo, Cliqa, Daydeals, and Zap, which also recently began to offer collated information about online deals, scour the Internet and collate all deals offered that day in a single e-mail to users. In this way, Israeli users do not have to visit each site to find the best deal, and are simultaneously exposed to the best discounts.
Zap CEO Eitan Zinger told "Globes", "Groupon's concern about being presented on Zap solely harms the consumer who wants to compare scores of deals offered daily." He said that Zap does not sell the daily transactions, but only mediates between the consumer and various sites, without making a profit, as the service is gratis to both sides.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 24, 2011
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