Google is in talks to buy Yelp

GOOGLE IS APPARENTLY in talks with a review site for local businesses with the unfortunate name of Yelp.

The pair have been chatting over steaming mugs of coffee for several years, but apparently the talks have been getting more serious of late. It seems Google has started taking off the false beard and moustache when it slurps its latte.

A price of more than $500 million has reportedly been mentioned, but whether or not one side laughed, no one has said.

Yelp raised $31 million in venture capital and is on track to bring in about $30 million in revenue this year.

The outfit was created by two PayPal veterans, Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons. It dominates the market for local business listings and ads in big American cities and has listings in Canada and Britain. Yelp's main rival is Citysearch and it gets more hits than that site.

Yelp works by selling sponsorships to businesses. For $300 to $1,000 a month, their ads appear on top of search results and on the profile pages of competitors, and businesses can post slide shows of photographs and prevent competitors from advertising on their page.

The only thing that could go wrong now is if the Vole reads The Inquirer and puts in a higher bid. µ