14 DAY TRIAL // Along with its new Google Wallet mobile payments system, the company also officially launched Google Offers, a deals site that's been working on for the past few months. Google revealed Offers about a month ago, but only enabled users to sign up for the service, no actual offers were running.
Google Offers will be initially available in Portland, but will roll out to other places starting with San Francisco and New York, the cities where Wallet will launch in as well.
There's a reason why Google is only launching Offers now and why it will only be available in places where Wallet is, the two products are highly integrated.
Any discount or coupon you get via Offers, will be automatically transferred to your wallet. Then, if you pay with your phone, the discount will be automatically applied.
This is already a big improvement over the way Groupon works for example, since everything is done automatically and online, there's no need to print coupons and the likes.
Google Offers will serve daily deals at first, like Groupon and its countless clones, enabling users to get discounts at restaurants, shops and other local businesses.
However, there are much bigger plans, things like check-in offers, which provide discounts if you check into a location on Google Maps/Places/Latitude for example. Another option are offer ads which could also come with discounts or special deals.
And it continues from there, you can get an offer from Google via the regular email newsletter, but also simply through your daily searches. Anything you find, you just add to your Wallet and you can redeem it later.
Of course, just like with Wallet, there are no guarantees. But if Wallet picks up, the integration between the two will prove healthy.
And if the product scales, Google has a lot of places and chances to present you with a deal, considering that most people spend quite a lot of time on Google sites each day, not to mention all of the sites that carry Google ads.