Google Offers - Groupon Beware!

Google ‘Offers’ officially launched (in Beta) today [4/22/11] for sign ups to people in Portland, New York and San Francisco. 

People can now sign up for upcoming deals. At this time, users can simply sign up and then offers will come later, starting in Portland, Oregon and moving on to New York and the San Francisco Bay Area.

So What is Google Offers?

The new Google Offers product provides users discounts of up to 50 percent off at various establishments such as restaurants, spas, and more. You will be able to sign up for alerts which will inform you of the Offers as they are available, probably daily or some other user defined frequency.

Google hasn’t offered too much information about the newly launched Google Offers product but a video (see below) makes us think that you will be able to access much of the same coupons and discounts as competing services like; Groupon, LivingSocial, and more.

Didn’t Google Try to Buy Groupon... What Happened?

Yes, they did try, and failed. The word on the street is that Google tried to acquire Groupon last year and when the price tag reached more than $6 billion (reportedly) talks began to fall apart.

Deal sites have been popping up all over the place and big brands have been seen jumping into the race.  Back in March the New York Times launched their own daily deals type site called TimesLimited. Reports have shown that Facebook is working on a spinoff of the Deals (update: Facebook Deals Launches) they launched back in November and Yahoo has shown some real interest in LivingSocial, pumping $175 million into their banking account.

This post originally appeared at UBE, Inc.

For more information about this article, or to learn more about Seth Meyerowitz & UBE, Inc. please visit our website. UBE is a full service, Long Island Based, Online Marketing Company.