What will be real interesting is to see how the Groupon model scales for Google. In my little realm of the SMB market the Groupon deals have become a four letter word due to their inability to drive quality traffic to the businesses. Coupons really only work for two types of customers (on a long term basis): 1. driving new clients who will stay clients to a business 2. enticing existing customers to buy more, earlier, or in larger quantities. The Groupon market so far has not met either mold with mainly deal seekers looking to save a buck.

In the end this is a huge leap for Google, on par with the Youtube purchase, as it is significantly different from providing and organizing the worlds information. The search results pages are going to get really busy with all this “goings-on”.

Thanks for keeping us in the know.