We recently wrote about Yelp’s impressive growth and guess what we weren’t the only ones impressed! Techcrunch reported last week that it’s almost a done deal that Google will buy Yelp for over half a billion dollars.

In the dramatic turn of events Techcrunch announced this morning that the deal is off because the CEO and Founder, Jeremy Stoppelman, changed his mind in the final stages of the acquisition.

TechCrunch suspects a “better deal” from a competitor might have been the reason of this deal falling apart. I belong to a group which is happy that the deal didn’t go through.

Yelp with its unique model of operation which generates loyalty through its offline events that are converted to reviews online and the online loyalty that is rewarded by organizing events offline has a very strong sense of community among its prolific reviewers. Though I have had less interaction with the Yelp community I already feel like I am a part of this growing loyal group (community certainly does not think that yet).

Once the rumors were out, the community reacted against the deal which threatens the core existence of Yelp. The community did think that Yelp fits into the content model of Google but it will also be the sole reason for the reviewers to turn away from Yelp as the sense of closed and loyal group will be lost.

Following are few of the reactions posted by the community readers…

Thought this cannot be the only reason to walk away from the deal it will be interesting to hear what the real reasons were. Let’s wait and whatch!