Official: Google Offers Goes Live, First Portland Offer Arrives

[As promised below in our post from late Tuesday night, the first Google Offer just arrived minutes ago in my Gmail inbox. Here’s a screenshot, followed by the remainder of Tuesday night’s post about it.] Sometime in the next several hours, presumably thousands of Google users in the Portland, Ore., area will get an email […]

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[As promised below in our post from late Tuesday night, the first Google Offer just arrived minutes ago in my Gmail inbox. Here’s a screenshot, followed by the remainder of Tuesday night’s post about it.]

google-offers-actual

google-offers-logo-betaSometime in the next several hours, presumably thousands of Google users in the Portland, Ore., area will get an email from Google offering them $10 worth of products from a local coffee shop for the low price of only $3.

And with that, Google Offers will take its first baby step into a very competitive deals/coupon space that includes daily offerings from the likes of Groupon, Living Social and many others.

Google Offers was born in late January, not long after Google reportedly failed to buy Groupon. Google began taking sign-ups for the Offers service in Portland and a few other areas just last month.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and VP of Commerce Stephanie Tilenius announced Google Offers at the D Conference tonight. Schmidt confidently said the reason Offers will succeed is because of its ties to Google Wallet — that Google is the “first company to integrate offers and payments on a phone,” according to Danny Sullivan’s live blog of tonight’s event.

Subscribers will get an offer every weekday and once on weekends. Business owners will get a dashboard that will presumably help them track the response to their offers. They’ll also get very hands-on Google guidance in creating the offer itself, as this sample shows:

offers-sample

If you’re a Portlander, Google says you can expect tomorrow’s deal to come from Floyd’s Coffee Shop, and future offers from Powell’s Books, Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade and Le Bistro Montage.

Offers is expected to launch in New York and the San Francisco/Oakland areas in “the near future,” Google’s help page says.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Matt McGee
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Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.

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