"Jeremy Stoppleman, the CEO of Yelp, has walked away from an all-but-signed deal to be acquired by Google for more than half a billion dollars," according to the technology blog TechCrunch.
Last week, the blog said Google and Yelp are in advanced acquisition negotiations and the deal is "very likely to close." The two companies had agreed on a price-- around $550 million-- and were working through the final details of the acquisition.
Attributing to sources, TechCrunch said that Yelp notified Google that they were not going to sell.
Reportedly, the two companies have had conversations for several years, but a more serious round of acquisition talks began two months ago.
Yelp was founded in 2004 by two PayPal veterans, Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons, and dominates the market for reviews of local businesses and ads in big American cities, and has listings in Canada and Britain.