Mashable reported last night that Google looks like its gearing up to take on Groupon.com head to head with its own Product Google Offers.
Google does own the domain name GoogleOffers.com
According to Mashable they have a “confidential fact sheet straight from the Googleplex about the company’s new group buying service. “Google Offers is a new product to help potential customers and clientele find great deals in their area through a daily email,” the fact sheet says.”
Google Offers looks and operates much like Groupon or LivingSocial. Users receive an e-mail with a local deal-of-the-day. They then have the opportunity to buy that deal within a specific time limit (we assume 24 hours). Once enough people have made the purchase, the Google Offer is triggered and users get that all-too-familiar $10 for $20 deal for that Indian restaurant you’ve never tried.
“From what we can tell, Google Offers will be powered by Google Checkout. It also includes Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Google Buzz and e-mail sharing options.”
As you will recall Groupon.com rejected Google’s six Billion dollar buy out offer in December.
Instead Groupon.com went out and raised almost $1 Billion itself from investors.
Now that Google with its $35 Billion in the bank is getting ready to take on Groupon.com things should get very interesting.
The market seems to like the news as shares of Google are trading up over 2% or $14 in early trading.
Competition breeds innovation – this is a good thing for everyone, consumers & businesses.
– TBC
hard to beat Groupon, now that the latter has raised over a billion of dollars to invest
I feel that Google Offers will be another fully/nearly flop like Knol and Checkout
Groupon’s rejection of the $6 billion offer from Google will go down in history as one of the greatest follies of greed and hubris.
Google works because it does a few things really well. And those things are things that do not require much in the way of human intervention. At almost every step of the process Groupon is extremely hands on. From feet on the street sales people to the design and copy writing. I think Google will find this a very difficult model to strip down and have it still be effective enough to matter.
As to the hubris of turning down Google’s buyout offer. I don’t know about that. A two year old company that was profitable within it’s first three quarters? If the leadership still has passion for the project it’s likely nothing to do with greed and more about vision. Who knows?
“Groupon’s rejection of the $6 billion offer from Google will go down in history as one of the greatest follies of greed and hubris.”
no, the #1 rejection of the millennium has been the one made by Jerry Yang to the $45 billions Microsoft’s offer to buy Yahoo
I wrote an article for another site on December 15th outlining how Google could crush Groupon once they declined their $6B offer. This is almost exactly what I saw coming. Groupon is F’d
http://singlepill.com/2010/12/15/437/
Yep this sounds like one of Google “already fails” new innovations. Are you kidding me…taking on Groupon ? I dont think so…keep dreaming Google and stick to search ads …ohh Facebook is taking a big bit out of that too..
bye bye Google