Five Companies Who Might Try to Acquire Yelp

Yelp's East Coast Headquarters

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Yelp is a multinational corporation that develops, hosts, and markets Yelp.com and the Yelp mobile application, which publish user reviews about local businesses, train small businesses to responsibly respond to those reviews, hosts social events for reviewers, and provides basic data about businesses. Founded in 2004 as an email referral service by former Paypal employees Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons at MRL Ventures, Yelp was relaunched as an online review service. The company took off with $30 million in revenue in 2010 and more than 4.5 million crowd-sourced reviews. Over the last few years, Yelp has expanded in Europe and Asia and as of this year, Yelp.com has had 132 million monthly visitors and 57 million reviews. With the recent $2.6 billion acquisition of OpenTable by Priceline, Yelp’s share price has risen on Wall Street by 13.79 percent and currently has a market cap of $5.13 billion. Read on for the five companies who might seek to acquire Yelp in the near future.

5. Amazon

In May of this year, Amazon quietly launched a feature allowing customers to write reviews for local restaurants, spas, and other various activities, putting it in competition with other online services including Angie’s List and Yelp. Part of an iPhone app update for Amazon Local, the new review feature hints at the idea of Amazon launching a local marketplace. Amazon might want to acquire Yelp if the retail giant wants to be a serious force in the online review business.

4. Google

Google entered negotiations with Yelp in 2009 for a potential acquisition that was never reached. The online tech giant offered Yelp more than $550 million, but Yelp unexpectedly backed out of the deal in the later stages of negotiation. At the time, no details were given as to why Yelp decided not to sell, but it was rumored that the company was offered an even bigger deal from another online giant. Google has since bought Zagat and collects its own review information from users, but acquiring Yelp still isn’t completely out of the picture.

3. Yahoo

In December of 2009, Yahoo made a grasp at Yelp with a $1 billion offer to acquire the company, causing the Google deal to fall through when Google refused to match the 10-figure offer. The offer was eventually abandoned following a disagreement between Yelp’s management and board of directors. However, there are rumors that Yahoo is still interested in the online review company and might make another attempt at acquiring Yelp to help boost its monthly visitor rate.

2. Apple

Even though Yelp’s content was integrated into the mapping and directions application of Apple’s September 2012 release of iOS 6, there’s no doubt that Apple may attempt to fully acquire Yelp and bake its dataset into their larger platform offerings. As a relatively young public company at the time of the Apple partnership, Yelp’s revenue skyrocketed due to the  boost in marketing and public appeal–meaning the review site might be more open to an acquisition when compared to Google and Yahoo.

1. Expedia

In June of this year, Priceline Group’s acquisition of OpenTable and TripAdvisor’s acquisition of La Fourchette turned all eyes on Expedia. Both Priceline and TripAdvisor currently have an edge over Expedia in an extremely competitive online travel industry, leading many to believe Expedia may attempt to acquire Yelp. There’s a good chance Expedia will acquire the online review site for a number of reasons–Yelp gives Expedia the competitive edge of reservations, reviews from its customers, and even the possibility of reservations outside of restaurants. Now it simply comes down to if Expedia can afford an offering price.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Written by Derrick Krom

Derrick is a recent graduate of Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia where he received a B.A. in English and Communication Studies. Throughout his life, Derrick has traveled the country and even got to study abroad in London, England for four amazing months. He's a guitar player, avid music fan and lover of literature, film, and all things entertainment.