11 ms·
What will Google offer?
- marcamillion 16y agoWow.....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 ?
- ilium 16y agoI subscribed for NYC. They just sent me an email saying that I'm on the waiting list, "to bring you great deals at 50% off or more". I was wondering when Google was going to jump on that bandwagon.
- rohanprabhu 16y agoNot another groupon clone please...
- thankuz 16y agoPretty 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 16y agowhy not? competition is great.
- hugh3 16y agoNot 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.
- d0m 16y agoUnless you headshot Kong Kong (meaning have a better tool or a better way to win).
- scottkrager 16y agoDon't forget Living Social. I've seen better and better offers from them this year. Seem to be doing well.
- thankuz 16y agoBut, what happens when David recruits Jane to his side? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2471581 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2471581
- elliottcarlson 16y agoOf course any evidence of that would break any confidentiality agreements that were surely put in place when stepping down from Google.
- ry0ohki 16y agoMaybe if it were Apple these would be the only two options. Unfortunately Google does a lot of "half ass" launches. By that I mean they release a product that is the "Google version" of something else that is out there. But they do no marketing, so unless it's amazing like Gmail or Chrome the most likely option is what happens to most things Google clones: c) Google launches, and some people use it... but not enough to make a dent in Groupon, but just enough people to justify running the service
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- rednum 16y agoThe 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 16y agoFor 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.)
- webmonkeyuk 16y ago+1
- jordan0day 16y agoYeah, I was going to respond to the question in the title with "A broken back button, apparently."
- fedd 16y agothe russian letters are broken and show as questions. this is 2011, why encoding errors!
- Qz 16y agoIt still works if you click it twice in a row fast enough. But yes, it's annoying.
- dstein 16y agoYou think they'd use this as an opportunity to use HTML5 pushstate.
- ratsbane 15y agoThat 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 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.
- Jcasc 16y agoI 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.
- ignifero 16y agoSorry, Groupon, it's not like you didn't have a buyout chance. (does this sound coming from the future?)
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- dstein 16y agoI 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.
- TruthElixirX 15y agoThis isn't social in the same sense as their past failures were though. Orkrut, Buzz, etc all relied on your friends also using those services. Crowd sourced coupons don't have this holding them up.
- thecoffman 16y agoSince 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?
- thankuz 16y agoI think Instant Search was pretty innovative, but one could probably say that it came about due to Twitter and real-time.
- bakhlawa 16y agoI hope this is a joke. Instant Search is a UX nightmare with the screen changing / morphing with every keystroke. Now if you meant Google Suggest, I'd have no argument, but on any new browser install, one of the first items is to switch Instant Search off.
- thankuz 16y agoAgreed. Meant the concept, not necessarily the execution. Definitely see the potential, given they continue to improve it.
- TruthElixirX 15y agoThe most frustrating thing about instant search, to me, is that even in Firefox 4 and Opera (Haven't tried it on Chrome) the instant part freezes up sometimes if I type really quickly or backspace too fast.
- patrickaljord 16y ago
- ameyamk 16y agoquestion 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 16y agoThey 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.
- Andrew_Quentin 16y agoSure would. They're totally different things. In one, google was the first, the inventor if you like, and gathered the customer base slowly, in the other, they have competition, are late to the game, and probably besides tech savy people who read hacker news or other tech magazines very few people would know that Google Offers even exists without some massive ad campaign.
- erik_p 16y agoI 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 )
- spontaneus 16y agoIt'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 16y agoThey don't have to be better if it comes installed on new android phones.
- spontaneus 16y agoWasn't buzz going to kill twitter too because you don't have to leave your inbox?
- jshen 16y agoyeah, but I don't think it's analogous. First, buzz is only useful if your friends are using it too. This isn't true for coupons. Second, there will be a whole lot of non tech savy people that will buy an android phone and click the big icon that says "coupons". I think this is a very different demographic with a much lower barrier for a new user to find it useful.
- spontaneus 16y agoShould be interesting longterm to see how this coupon craze plays out. My mom figured out Groupon, but has no clue what a smartphone is so Google may be a little ahead of the curve for part of the demographic they are after.
- f1gm3nt 16y agoGoodbye 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 16y agoYeah, this would seem to work really well with the recent Latitude auto-checkin support on Android
- 182446 15y agoNo 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.
- 27182818284 16y agoLots 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 http://www.sosasta.com/startup.php)
- ry0ohki 16y agoAll 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 16y agoI 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.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- alanh 16y agoReally original branding. http://www.sellit.com/pages/default http://www.sellit.com/pages/default http://www.bestbuy.com/ http://www.bestbuy.com/
- pkulak 16y agoI'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.
- eddieplan9 16y agoIt breaks my back button! And it's from Google, the best web company?
- itswindy 15y agoWhat will Google offer? More 'me too,' products, more Walmartization of SERPS to kill the small guys and a sliding stock price.