Yelp, a social networking site that lets users leave reviews on local businesses, is in talks with Google over a possible acquisition. What’s an acquisition? In business terms – an acquisition is when one company picks up/obtains/acquires another company. For example: Google acquired YouTube back in 2006, Google Acquires AdMob, Yahoo actually does acquire Flickr, MySpace Music Acquires Imeem, Disney acquires Marvel Entertainment for $4B, etc… In tech, acquisitions are actually quite commonplace as acquisitions allow the bigger companies to look at and utilize the smaller companies’ existing infrastructure and technology. In doing so, it betters the bigger companies’ well, company. Yelp is a perfect example of how the small guy can help the big guy. Not only can Yelp throw one helluva party, they already have an established user-base/infrastructure that makes Yelp a very powerful search engine for businesses in any category. Obviously, Google took notice.

What does that mean to you and me? If the acquisition does indeed take place, not only does that mean big money for Yelp (do the Elite members get anything out of the acquisition?!? At least one HauteAzifug party!??!) , it could also mean a further business reach for Google. I don’t know about you, but all of this typing has made me acquire an appetite. Time to eat! Now where to go eat. Maybe I’ll check Yelp…

For more info, read the NY Times and TechCrunch reports.