Over the past year, daily deal websites have become increasing popular, specifically Groupon and LivingSocial. In November of 2010 Google offered almost 6 billion dollars to buy Groupon but the offer was turned down.
On June 1, 2011 Google launched it’s new service called Google Offers. The first “deal” featured on Google Offers was for Floyde’s Coffee Shop in Portland, Oregon. Currently the only cities featuring deals on Google Offers are NYC (uptown, midtown and downtown), Portland, Oakland / East Bay and San Fransisco.
It is evident that the “daily deal” business model is profitable. Google offered 6 billion to buy one of those business models and when they were turned down they decided to build their own.
Expect to see a lot more cities added to Google Offers this summer. Google has offices in New York, California, Michigan, Georgia, Texas, Colorado, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Illinois, Washington and Wisconsin. It won’t take long for Google to offer deals in those locations and the surrounding areas.
This could be a very lucrative market for Google. If they decide to display their deals based on consumer search keywords, they could really cash in on offering daily deals.
Expect to see LivingSocial and Groupon polish their business models in response to Google’s attempt to penetrate the daily deals market.
At least as consumers, we may be able to save a little more money if the right deals come our way!
For more information, see Google’s documentation on how it works.
Let me know what your thoughts are in the comments section below.
