Trying to buy Groupon is so passé—why not do what everyone else is doing and launch a deal site of your own? That's apparently what Google has decided to do after its failed bid to purchase the popular daily deal site. The service will be called Google Offers, the company confirmed, but the service is still in the testing phase and it will be a while before customers get to start signing up for yet even more deals.Unofficial confirmation of the service came on Thursday via Mashable, which obtained leaked documents from the search giant. The documents showed a pretty standard Groupon competitor, complete with a localized deal of the day depending on the user's location and powered by Google Checkout. They also revealed that Google plans to pay 80 percent of participating business' share of the revenue three days after the deal runs, with the remaining balance being held for 60 days to cover refunds.
With the info leaked, Google went ahead and confirmed its plans. "Google is communicating with small businesses to enlist their support and participation in a test of a prepaid offers/vouchers program," the company said in a statement. "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. We do not have more details to share at this time, but will keep you posted."
The news about Google Offers comes just over a month after the company reportedly made a $6 billion bid to buy the daily deal king, Groupon. Neither company commented publicly about their dealings, but it quickly became an open secret that Groupon rejected Google's offer in hopes of making its own initial public offering sometime in the not-too-distant future.
Given the timing of the Google Offers leak, it seems likely that Google was already in the process of creating its own deals system when it was trying to buy Groupon, with the intention of merging the two. With Groupon deciding to go its own way, Google is just moving ahead with its own plan.
It's not clear when the service will finally launch, but when it does, it will at least have an advantage over most other Groupon clones by being affiliated with Google. Given the sheer number of similar deal sites that have sprung up in recent months, Google Offers will definitely benefit from the help of widespread public exposure that Google can offer.
Source: http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/01/if-you-cant-buy-it-build-it-google-offers-to-counter-groupon.ars
I bet you the Groupon execs wish they had that 6 billion right about now.
