In her recent blog post, Sucharita Mulpuru sees the value in Groupon (she personally uses it), but thinks 5 billion is a bit out of hand.  In her words:

Here’s why:

• $5 billion is an absurd valuation for a company that is in a  business with virtually no barriers to entry and is younger than my  toddler.
• That’s more than what they paid for YouTube, which had a heck of a lot more traffic when it was acquired than Groupon has now.
• It’s a huge chunk of the cash that Google has on hand.  That’s a lot of money.

Check the blog post to see the rest of her thoughts, and then come back here to discuss.  Is Google buying Groupon a bad idea?  What shpuld the valuation be?  What are Groupon's obstacles and how can they overcome?