Baidu (NASDAQ:Baidu) reportedly planned to acquire Nuomi.com, an online group-buying service owned by Renren Inc. (NYSE: RENN), at a valuation between $300 million to $500 million (report in Chinese).

This is not the first time for Baidu to spearhead foray into group-buying industry. It rolled out a group-buying directory service via hao123.com in 2010, and then, upgraded the unit to Baidu Group-buying Navigation in the following year. The top search engine also unveiled Baidu Group-buying at t.baidu.com in February this year.

It is presumed that this move targets to gain access to group-purchasing user base and to learn from e-commerce services in a bid to layout in O2O sector via constructing a trading loop based on Baidu Map.

Baidu claimed the active users of its location based service (LBS) surpassed 100 million in this May. The LBS of Baidu not only include positioning, route planning and navigation, but also combines one-stop services for restaurants, supermarkets and hotels.

According to latest data from Tuan800.com, Nuomi is the forth largest group-purchasing website in China with a market share of 11.11 percent, after Meituan.com, Dianping.com and 55tuan.com.

Emma Lee is Shanghai-based tech writer, covering startups and tech happenings in China and Asia in general. We are looking for stories related to tech and China. Reach her at lixin@technode.com.