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Interesting, $3bn is about what Yahoo! is said to have offered to pay for Groupon, which is outpacing the likes of Foursquare in the geolocation market, in talks earlier this year. Those talks came to nothing. Now enter Google which can not only easily afford such a price, but it would make the first significant investment it has made in sometime.

A point to consider here in China. Would we see the likes of a Baidu make a play for Meituan.cn or fantong.com? I personally doubt it. History shows most Chinese Internet giants have developed their own technologies internally rather than acquiring it through an M&A play.

It is not for lack of choice for a potential purchaser of this type of company in China. The China International Electronic Commerce Center under the Ministry of Commerce reported that China had over 1,215 group-buying sites at the end of August, 2010 compared with 100 in March. Clearly, the entrepreneurial copy cats are hoping for some of this Groupon effect to rub off on them.

I guess the Chinese Internet companies share a common belief in being able to  replicate most technologies. However, this is not dissimilar to Western firms. They too, believe they could replicate most technologies. Unfortunately, most successful business enterprises are more than just the platform and this is where many in the Chinese corporate M&A scene fail to grasp  the importance of looking beyond the platform, the UI or even the cool widgets and thinking if their company culture/skills/team could in fact embrace this technology to fulfill a rivals success.  Though my Western eyes, Google is taking the right path and some in the Chinese M&A tech sector should be focusing more on the why rather than the what.