A Sneak Peak At Google Offers (Courtesy Of Google Search)

Google just silently launched the "GroupOn" competition "Google Offers". First of all, I still don't understand why GroupOn turned on the 6 billion offer from Google, which I blogged about, and I think Google has the cloud to come up with a much better product here, and I still like to see Yelp and Google join force in this field.

A Sneak Peak At Google Offers (Courtesy Of Google Search)

Neither will they drive a huge amount of new customers to these businesses (the deals appear to be more pedestrian than insane). It is a different business model entirely. Groupon convinces businesses to offer amazing deals specifically because of its one-deal-a-day promotion and the promised surge of new customers. Google Offers seems to be more predicated on showing you deals in your vicinity, and will likely be more tied to your mobile phone and Google Maps. This approach may scale better than Groupon, but the quality of the deals may not be as exciting. Obviously, since this is a work in progress, we’ll have to wait and see what other bells and whistles Google Offers actually launches with.

 Google has a better approach here, GroupOn is still very limited to local salons or spas, their business category is very limited, and once the so called "new customer" tried a service with a much reduced deal, it'll be a question if they will come back and pay for the full prices.