It’s been a big day for daily-deal site Groupon. On Thursday morning, General Mills announced the launch of Groupon offers in Minneapolis and San Francisco, marking Groupon’s first partnership with a major consumer packaged-goods company. Then, in the afternoon, Crain’s reported that Groupon has hired Margo Georgiadis, Google’s vice president of global sales planning and technology, as its new chief operating officer.
The news comes as the company prepares for an initial public offering later this year and as Google itself launches rival service Google Offers in New York, the Bay Area, and Portland, Ore.
Georgiadis, 47, was Google’s highest-ranking executive in Chicago, where Groupon is based. Her departure from Google’s Chicago operation follows that of Kevin Willer, who opened the sales office there in 2000 and left earlier this month.
Groupon, which now employs more than 6,000 people worldwide and has a reported monthly revenue of over $200 million, is valued as high as $20 billion. “By late Thursday morning,” The Wall Street Journal reported, “the [General Mills] offer was sold out in Minneapolis and on its way to doing so in San Francisco.”
