The founders of DailyDeal have repurchased the company from Google about one-and-a-half years after they sold it to the huge U.S.-based company.

Fabian and Ferry Heilemann, who are brothers, founded the online coupon business in Berlin in 2009. Google acquired the company in 2011, and had wanted the company to boost its Google Offers unit and to be more competitive with such rivals as Groupon in locations such as Europe, news reports said.

But the daily deal sector is less promising than it once was, and Google was even thinking of closing the DailyDeal unit down, news reports allege.

The founders – happy to get the company back – expect to expand the company starting this year, according to news reports. It already operates in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. They will keep on focusing on coupons, but are also hinting at adding other business models.

“We are pleased to inform you today that we as founders and managing directors have bought the company DailyDeal back from Google and will now continue to lead it on our own,” the brothers said in an online statement quoted in English translation by CNET. “DailyDeal will of course continue to offer the same service and exciting offers – exactly as we have done in the past. In addition, we will expand the business in the coming months. In the name of the DailyDeal team we thank all of our users, business partners and colleagues for their loyalty and support over the last three years. We are very much looking forward to what lies ahead of us!”

Last year, TechZone360 was noting how the daily deals sector doesn’t always add to increased revenue. But daily-deal “marketing is a new way for small, local places of business to garner interest and awareness. … The daily deal market is a hot one when it comes to getting attention and marketing.”

Meanwhile, to get a better idea about the future of the entire daily deal sector, Groupon is being watched by analysts. The Chicago Business Journal is reporting that Groupon will report earnings on Wednesday.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported, too, that many of Groupon’s “biggest competitors appear to be doing worse” than Groupon, “especially LivingSocial, which recently received a much-needed round of funding that was quickly labeled a desperate act of a dying company.”