After six weeks of speculation, Yahoo has finally made its entrance into the group-buying game. The Internet giant announced earlier this week that it has created a partnership program called "Local Offers," where all the best deal-of-the-day sites are aggregated into one comprehensive repository.

While the move to enter into the thriving e-commerce space surprised no one, the decision to do so via a partnership program was a bit of a shocker. Rumors have run rampant over the last month that Yahoo would jump into the local deals game by purchasing Groupon, the largest and fastest-growing group-buying service in the world, or by creating its own solution from scratch. If those rumors were true and a deal with Groupon was being discussed, it is obviously now dead.

The new program, which was announced at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, boasts an impressive lineup of partners, including Goldstar, ScoopSt ValPak, Lifebooker and Groupon. The service is currently operational, but is being tested on the beta version of Yahoo's site. To check out the initial repository of deals, click here.

If implemented correctly, the move should boost revenue streams for both Yahoo and its 20-plus deal-of-the-day partners, as well as offer consumers a one-stop shop for group-buying.

"I think a service that aggregates several different special deals sources will give consumers great deals and make the marketplace much more transparent," Karsten Weide, research vice president of Digital Media & Entertainment at IDC, said in a statement. "For partners in such a service, the audience reach of a large partner will give them a lot of much needed distribution."

Meanwhile, a new set of acquisition rumors involving Groupon hit the wire today, this time involving Google. All Things Digital's Kara Swisher reported early this morning that the search engine giant is "in discussions" to acquire Groupon for "well over" $3 billion. With both companies being rather tight-lipped, we will have to wait and see if these rumors have any merit.

Beecher Tuttle is a TechZone360 contributor. He has extensive experience writing and editing for print publications and online news websites. He has specialized in a variety of industries, including health care technology, politics and education. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Tammy Wolf