
Ironically, a very popular coupon can seriously hurt the company's bottom line. In the Groupon model coupons usually cut in half the price of a service or product, and the retailer or service provider eats the difference. It could pull retailers away from Groupon by subsidizing their costs and minimizing risk. Of course, Google's killer app in any competition is its bank account. In fact, it probably could get enough local businesses to sign up just through word of mouth. By integrating daily deals into its advertising network, Google can quickly and easily gain exposure with businesses. Still, it's a very good starting point for launching a daily deals business. Google already has a major advertising network through AdWords and AdSense, but it isn't focused on local. As Mashable, which broke the story, put it: Google Offers will also cultivate a stronger relationship with local advertisers than the competitors can create. This is the extra level of targeted marketing services like Living Social and Groupon lack. Google Offers will do the same, but as it ramps up, it could use Google search to target people who've recently search phrases such as: Say both Groupon and Google Offers show a deal with a tire company. While Google Offers will use the Groupon model as a base - asking users to sign up for a daily deal newsletter - in the future it could do more targeted emailings and have millions of customers come to it via search. Groupon works by emailing its members a daily menu of discounts to use for restaurants, vacations, and other services. With Groupon regrouping after the Google acquisition talks and Living Social still getting its footing, there wasn't either company could do to prepare for this worst case scenario and, at the moment, not much they can do to fight it. Even if Groupon expected Google to clone its model after the rejected acquisition, Google has the cash and the search platform that Groupon and like-minded competitor Living Social can't begin to match. Groupon!Īnd that's a serious problem for the deep discount dotcom darling that pushes deep discount deals to customers.

That was fast: Weeks after Groupon spurned Google's $6 billion buyout offer, the search giant announces Google Offers, a daily deals website that looks suspiciously like.
