Google Maps to partner with GoYellow?

Posted on February 18, 2007
Filed Under Local Search |

The German Newspaper “DIE WELT” reported in its Saturday issue that based on insider-information Google “at least” offered a close partnership to the Munich based Yellow Pages Company GoYellow.

As Google acquired endoxon the “heart” of the mapping technology that is used on the GoYellow website earlier and given that the relevancy of the Google Maps search results is at least equal to the one of the German company there seems to be only one “area” left that is so appealing to Google that they could really think of partnering up.

The monetization bit of this billion dollar market.

GoYellow does work with a telephone sales force to get SMEs to sign up for their advertising packages in Germany. Given the fact, that convincing a SME like say a baker to do performance marketing is very unlikely to happen just through web-based-acquisition, to partner up with a company that has a sales force does sound logical. And local search is a local business by definition, so therefore partnering up with local companies does make sense to leverage the expertise and business relationships already existing.

However let’s see what’s really behind this, as one can imagine that Google will always have the bigger picture in mind - Worldwide or at least European solutions -, and do they e.g. really want to have a company for every single European market? This would very likely end up opening a can of worms.
And Google has “partnered” with qype.com as well, where in this partnership they will “only” display the reviews and ratings of the German Yelp on their Maps product.

Will be exciting to see what this really is about. A Google spokesman regarding to this said. We will not comment on market rumours.

GoYellow new local search - a closer look

Google buys Endoxon mapping startup company - update

Google buys AJAX mapping techology company

Google Maps in bed with qype - is that a good idea?