Mountain View, Calif. – Unable to reach a deal for Groupon,
Google (NASD: GOOG) is now preparing to launch a rival group buying service of its own.
Mashable reported that the Silicon Valley company is now courting businesses
for Google Offers, a local deal-of-the-day service similar to Groupon and LivingSocial.
Subscribers will receive daily emails with substantial
offers to local restaurants and businesses, which will go into effect once a
minimum number of deals are sold.
"Google is communicating with small
businesses to enlist their support and participation in a test of a pre-paid
offers/vouchers program," Google wrote in a statement, published by
Mashable.
"This initiative is part of an ongoing effort at Google to make
new products, such as the recent Offer Ads beta, that connect businesses with
customers in new ways."
The news comes weeks after Google ended its pursuit
of Groupon, after offering a reported $6 billion for the company.
Instead,
Groupon is preparing to file for an initial public offering (IPO).
Related Links:
http://mashable.com/2011/01/20/google-offers
As Groupon taking the lead, other players such as LivingSocial are really behind in this playground. There was a huge advertising campaign over this week from LivingSocial on Amazon GC deals, but it seems still not taking much grounds. If those big sharks, such as Google, are going to get into the pie, that would sure make this further more interesting competitions. And, Facebook seems also like to get some “deals” from this as well, which they have launch their own page.
With all these competitions going on, those smaller players might be losing their chances to grow such as BuyWithMe, YourBestDeals and etc. I am not sure if this is a good thing or bad for the whole industry and how this would be to the small business owners.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out with Google vs. Groupon vs. LivingSocial (although I hope Google comes up with a better name than Offers). I love the daily deal sites and I don’t mind that there are lots of smaller Groupon clones that will never be big, but are still able to bring me great local deals!