Groupon Meets Its Newest Rival: Google

Google confirmed that it is creating Google Offers, a daily deal offering service designed to compete directly with Groupon. The latter boasts over 50 million e-mail subscribers world-wide, and is the leading daily deal offering service in their space.

Search Engine Land reports:

Google is communicating with small businesses to enlist their support and  participation in a test of a pre-paid offers/vouchers program. This  initiative is part of an ongoing effort at Google to make new products, such as the recent Offer Ads beta, that connect businesses with  customers in new ways.

Google made an unsuccessful bid of 6 billion dollars to purchase the daily-deal behemoth at the end of 2010. The deal allegedly fell through because Google was unwilling to pay the massive kill-fee administered by the U.S. government if it opposed the deal.

Search Engine Land: “Confirmed: Google Readies “Google Offers” Groupon Clone”