Mergers and acquisitions – these happen to be huge buzzwords in the business world, and it is no surprise to see how the tech industry, which has grown to a phenomenally large size over the past few decades, are also no strangers to mergers and acquisitions. In fact, the larger tech companies do not mind forking out what seems to be a premium in order to gobble up smaller companies that have ideas and services that their acquisitors would love to have – and it sure beats the heck out of pumping in plenty of money to perform some research and development. After all, why bother to reinvent the wheel, right? Having said that, Yelp has picked up the online food ordering platform Eat24 – which should be an interesting acquisition as we wait to see what will come out of it.
Eat24 happens to be used by approximately 20,000 restaurants throughout the US, and they have been a partner of Yelp’s since 2013 – which no doubt Yelp had already looked at Eat24 from a new angle for some time already. Although one has been able to place delivery and takeout orders from within Yelp’s apps and websites, this particular acquisition should be able to make the entire process more painless and seemingly seamless down the road. Apart from that, it would be a marriage of convenience of sorts, since Eat24 will now have more clout – which means restaurants would want to do more to be under Eat24’s radar.