Comments on: Google Expands Offers with Groupon Like Features

By: Google Offers Rolls Out in NYC And Promises Expansion to Other US Cities | Understanding Google Maps & Local Search

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 11:41:02 +0000

[...] has been clear from day one that the Google Offers daily deals were coming to both San Francisco and New York City. We just didn’t know when. THe NYC daily offers [...]

By: Google Hiring Offer’s Field Sales Staff in 17 Major U.S. Markets | Understanding Google Maps & Local Search

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:47:11 +0000

[...] desire and willingness to ramp up face to face sales in local markets. Their attempted acquistion of Groupon seemed be to focused on a quick development of an on-the-ground, locally focused sales team. [...]

By: Is Group Texting Google’s Next Social Circle? | Understanding Google Maps & Local Search

Tue, 03 May 2011 12:30:04 +0000

[...] a stand alone product it would be much more valuable if integrated with the likes of Latitude, the new Offers or even Google Voice. The team that created the product might stay as an independent development [...]

By: Dennis

Dennis — Sun, 01 May 2011 22:41:41 +0000

I’m getting younger… in that I’m more like my 20 year old college student, I don’t want another email in my inbox! He’s forced to use email by his college and rarely checks it.

Wait, he doesn’t use email, it’s text, Foursquare and Twitter.

Freedom of choice I suppose!

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 22:55:29 +0000

@Andy

Offers as free coupons in Places is and will be a bust until Google highlights them in some fashion. The Checkin requires Latitude which very few people are using… and the email Offers is at that very embryonic stage of development.

Even though the market place is moving very quickly, and Google was in it very early, they have really dropped the ball and are now playing catch up… the one thing that they do have is staying power so maybe they can be a player in the market.

Time will tell…. but the time won’t lack for excitement

By: Andy Kuiper

Andy Kuiper — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 20:31:48 +0000

Most of my client’s haven’t found much success with the Places ‘offers’. The Google ‘check-in’ aspect hasn’t caught on (yet), and many I talk to are getting a bit weary (both consumers and small business) with the email offers. However, I receive three email offers a day and have purchased a few services as a result. I’m not sure what will be the best outcome, however I suspect if push were to be in play, the check-in type offers might have some traction.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 20:03:51 +0000

Hi Scott

Google has incredible trust and brand recognition. On the selling side they have incredible knowledge about the 3 million US businesses that have claimed their listings and the national brands and others that are using Local Extensions in AdWords.

On the sell side, they have resources like reviewers, gmail clients, latitude users, Android users that they could leverage for exposure….

In the end, the deal space because of low technical barriers will be defined by the reach of the deals and the care that they give to merchants. On that front Groupon might have some vulnerabilities (although Google has yet to demonstrate that they know how to provide warm and fuzzies). This article http://bit.ly/hEh0dz demonstrates some of the issues that Groupon is running into.

By: Scott @ IE

Scott @ IE — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 19:54:41 +0000

Mike,

Great post. I’ve been keeping my eye on these “groupon competitors”, and the market seems to be getting quite saturated. I’ve been reading some articles doubting the value of these offers from a long-term perspective.

How do you think Google is going to differentiate themselves from all the others? Or, just because of the fact that they are Google, that’s enough differentiation?

I’m really going to keep a close watch on this product, and with Groupon’s ~$20B IPO coming up, it should be quite interesting.