Andrew Mason

Groupon fired Andrew Mason as chief executive officer on Thursday, ousting a co-founder who captured headlines with his quirky style but failed to reverse a crumbling share price or stop a gradual erosion of its main daily-deals business. The internet daily-deals company launched a search for a new leader to help turn it around, the same day its stock slid 24 percent after a dismal quarterly results report. 

Groupon CEO Andrew Mason has more plans to boost the company’s revenue. During a Groupon employee meeting Wednesday that was detailed by The Wall Street Journal, Mason – working without notes – laid out five initiatives the daily-deals site has in the works to professionalize its financial operations and to push more people to purchase Groupon’s daily offers for discounted restaurant meals, massages and other services.

5:00PM Groupon — Chicago’s golden-boy tech startup whose founders became billionaires when it went public — tripped over its own feet again Friday. The company, based in the old Montgomery Ward catalog warehouse at 600 W. Chicago, surprised Wall Street after the close on Friday when it disclosed in a regulatory filing that it’s having trouble with its financial controls. It also lowered its fourth-quarter earnings statement — the first results it had reported as a public company. Groupon’s auditor flagged the online coupon site for failing to set aside enough money for customer refunds. Groupon has started offering

2011 was the kind of year that tests leaders. So when Fortune set out to pick a Businessperson of the Year (and 49 runners-up), great stories were easy to find.

Google wanted to buy Groupon last fall for $5.3 billion. Spurned, Google is launching a Groupon clone called Google Offers. While not a surprise that Google was working on a local-deals service, it's now official — Google Retail tweeted a link to the Google Offers sign-up page.

Groupon announced that President and Chief Operating Officer Rob Solomon will step down from his position at the company.