The Ugliest Girl At The Dance: How Yahoo Destroyed Yelp’s Google Acquisition

A fascinating footnote to the failed Google acquisition of Yelp last December: a Yahoo counteroffer killed the deal, say two source with knowledge of the situation. As of December 17 Yelp was in the final stages of negotiations to sell to Google for $550 million. But just three days later the deal was off . So what happened during those three days? Yahoo came in with an offer to buy Yelp for $750 million - $200 million more than Google had offered. Yelp, via their investment bank, asked Google if they wanted to match it. Google declined, and one source says they didn't actually believe that there actually was a competing offer.