What will Google offer?

[thecoffman]

Since the failure of Wave, does it seem to anyone else the Google has been copying rather than innovating nowadays? Buzz was a copy of Twitter, this is a copy of Groupon, +1 is a copy of Facebook's like button etc...

I'd like to see more innovation and less parroting coming out of them. I don't want my search results to be social - I want them to be relevant and spam free. If they really feel like going "social" is the way to deliver those results, then cool - go with it - but don't just copy what another company is doing. Personally I feel like they're good at algorithmic and engineering solutions to problems and not good at social - why not stick with what you excel at?

[TillE]

I miss Wave. It was a wonderful idea, it just never really got off the ground. It could've been the next-generation federated communication platform, usable for just about any purpose imaginable. And they just pulled the plug while the official Wave client was floundering a bit.

Hopefully the leadership shakeup at Google will turn things around.

[mtogo]

Google has always copied and almost never innovated. They've done so well because they can build better technical applications than their competitors (e.g. Gmail).

That strategy doesn't work with social, though. They can rip off an idea and build a more technically sound product, but social needs more than just a good product, and google can't deliver.

[shin_lao]

Innovating is not inventing. Innovating, implies copying.

[thankuz]

I think Instant Search was pretty innovative, but one could probably say that it came about due to Twitter and real-time.

[zaidf]

why not stick with what you excel at?

Because most companies don't believe that trying to expand into another area will significantly hurt them in areas they already excel at.

[yanw]

Copying is allowed! it's a big part of innovating.

And to quote Eric Schmidt: "The last new idea in computer science was public key encryption in 1975"

It's the implementation of an idea that sets it apart.

[ignifero]

Agreed, but this one seems to be the perfect fit with google places and checkout. It's not great to see a Goliath taking on smaller competitors, but the truth is that Groupon hasn't innovated much since it launched.

[rednum]

The back button in my browser is broken on this site. I know it doesn't matter for the product itself, but it's one of these little annoying things that leave me with slightly negative - instead of totally neutral - impression.

[thankuz]

For a company that boasts so much about 'eating their own dog food,' it seems like a lot of things like that get overlooked on most of their new products. I used to call them out all the time on being hypocrites about a lot of the Webmaster / SEO rules they preached and didn't follow on their own domains (ie. canonical URLs, 301 redirects, sloppy URLs, etc.)

[jordan0day]

Yeah, I was going to respond to the question in the title with "A broken back button, apparently."

[ratsbane]

That bothered me too. Looking at the traffic, it's doing a 302 redirect (temporary) from www.google.com/offers/ to https://www.google.com/offers/t Perhaps the t page is just the temporary page that lists only a few cities and they're planning on using the main page at /offers once they've got more cities or businesses listed.

That still doesn't explain why they didn't just put the temporary page at /offers, though. I tend to give Google benefit of doubt and assume they had a sound technical reason when they do something I don't understand, but I'd like to see an explanation of the thinking behind that.

[Qz]

It still works if you click it twice in a row fast enough. But yes, it's annoying.

[fedd]

the russian letters are broken and show as questions. this is 2011, why encoding errors!

[dstein]

You think they'd use this as an opportunity to use HTML5 pushstate.

[webmonkeyuk]

+1

[ry0ohki]

All the people saying this will "kill" Groupon in some way are missing the fact that couponing is very far from a zero sum game. Customers are not brand loyal to coupon sites, as it's essentially free money, if Google Offers took off, then people would use BOTH Groupon and Google Offers. The only thing all these couponing sites will kill is the margins that restaurants have.

(Also, did anyone else think the subject meant what would Google offer salary-wise to not leave for Facebook? ;))

[ChuckMcM]

I too thought it would be a parody site of enter your salary and then some Javascript would add 25% to it and add a 4x of it as a 'retention' bonus package of shares. :-)

But I also had to upvote this "its not a zero sum game" aspect of this comment. Just like two 7-11's diagonally across from each other at a busy intersection can (or a circle-K across from a 7-11 etc) can make money there is a huge amount of squish around what constitutes a 'saturated' coupon market.

Google could win just by virtue of the fact that they integrate better with their own properties. That is why I felt Groupon turning down their $6B bid was not particularly wise. We'll see of course, its clear this process is going to complete the full cycle.

[spontaneus]

It's fine that Google is late in to group buying, but the problem is they aren't going to be able to do it any better than Groupon or Living Social so people aren't going to care. As other said, Google killed it with Gmail and it was far better than any other mail service, but how much better can they make 50% off coupons?

[jshen]

They don't have to be better if it comes installed on new android phones.

[f1gm3nt]

Goodbye Groupon?

This is going to get interesting. I can see this getting pushed to Android phones, with the option of getting a notification for one shot deals within you location. Pretty sure the Groupon guys are rethinking the offer they turned down.

[sandipc]

Yeah, this would seem to work really well with the recent Latitude auto-checkin support on Android

[182446]

No way. Groupon is going nowhere. I use coupon sites.. all of them. There are three different ones in my city and I use them all. If Google Offers opens here I will us it too.

[Jcasc]

I would personally use this over Groupon. Especially if it integrates well with all the current Google services I use. I'm sure Groupon is a bit uneasy about this one.

[ameyamk]

question is, is google willing to put salespeople, and build organization which is by nature very 'high touch' business? Putting a shiny offers page is one thing, and following up with the daily deal strategy is another...

[klous]

They already have a small army of salespeople pushing their ad network to SMB. Extending their salespeople's product line to include 'offers' wouldn't be a huge stretch.

[eddieplan9]

It breaks my back button! And it's from Google, the best web company?

[pkulak]

I'm just hoping that Google won't bend the merchants over quite like Groupon does. A 50% commission seems ridiculous. Hopefully the competition can push that number down.

[rohanprabhu]

Not another groupon clone please...

[hugh3]

Not just another one -- the Groupon clone to end all Groupon clones.

And I mean that literally. Once Google enters the game, who else will bother? Either

a) Google will lose against Groupon, proving that it's impossible to dislodge Groupon, or

b) Google will win against Groupon, in which case you'd be crazy to take on Google

David can sometimes beat Goliath, but if King Kong shows up to the fight as well then David should probably just go home.

[thankuz]

Pretty safe to say that if it's new, shiny, buzzing, makes money and users love it - Google will either (offer to) buy it, or build it.

[guelo]

why not? competition is great.

[marcamillion]

Wow.....talk about a shot across the bow.

Let the games/war begin.

Is it just me or is Google going to war with too many people ?

[27182818284]

Lots of inertia to overcome. Google Offers has six options to choose from compared to Groupon's long list of cities and presence in India. (http://www.sosasta.com/startup.php)

[itswindy]

What will Google offer?

More 'me too,' products, more Walmartization of SERPS to kill the small guys and a sliding stock price.

[alanh]

Really original branding.

http://www.sellit.com/pages/default http://www.bestbuy.com/

[ignifero]

Sorry, Groupon, it's not like you didn't have a buyout chance.

(does this sound coming from the future?)

[dstein]

I think you've got that backwards. Google are the ones who will probably regret lowballing Groupon. Google's track record in social anything is abysmal. What makes this half-assed attempt any different?

What Google's entry into this market means is that it will basically kill off any other Groupon clones, and merely solidify Groupon and Living Social's dominance.

[erik_p]

I just made the embarrassing mistake of verbally telling my co-workers to visit google.com "whack" offers (instead of saying forward slash or just slash )

[erik_p]

wow, AWS goes down and everyone loses their sense of humor :( (or do people not use "whack" on the west coast as slang for forward slash?)