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?
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.
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.
Gmail as a product was innovative in many ways (large storage, convenient search). It was much better than competitors, I switched immediately. Not sure if the same can be said about Google Offers.
Have you used Google Offers yet? With the big map they have as the background of the teaser it seems like it could be quite different from Groupon. They have mapping software built into a couple hundred million smartphones... Could be a nice differentiating factor. Not to mention an established relationship with millions of businesses through AdWords.
> Not to mention an established relationship with millions of businesses through AdWords.
I still think you need to have people on the ground. And lots of them. As a small aside, I work for a Groupon-clone website in a non-US market. I've built a very nice Internet-based redemption interface for the business owners to check the clients' coupons. Guess what? ~75% of them don't even have Internet at the POS, they print their coupon lists at a home computer and somehow manage all the clients we send them manually. We also manually create accounts for about half of them, because, apparently, creating an user account on our Drupal-based website is too damn difficult.
Maybe this time is different, and all the tech-savy small-business owners from out-there will go directly into Google's arms. I personally doubt it.
Groupon needed a ton of boots on the ground because no one knew who Groupon was and they didn't have existing relationships with millions of businesses. I think Google could automate a lot of it with good results.
> They have mapping software built into a couple hundred million smartphones... Could be a nice differentiating factor.
Open up Maps, hit the 'Find Places' button, and pick Restaurants, for example. There's a sponsored, very generic link for Groupon here; Google could do one better by adding a little 'offers available' symbol beside some of the restaurants.
I 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.
I love instant search UX, whenever I use a browser that is not supported it just seems like I'm getting a super slow experience. Maybe you should give it a longer try.
The 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.
No. The reason Rome's expansion plans fell short of expectations were because the perimeter to area ratio was too high. Defending lots of land with an enormous Mediterranean sea in the middle is far harder that a tight peninsula of farmland.
Similarly, Cisco buying Groupon increases perimeter to surface area far more than Google buying Admob.
There's copying and then there's copying. At one point Google had a reputation for being innovative. Insofar as "innovative" continues to be a word that means something then--given that there is indeed very little truly new under the sun, technology or otherwise--the question is two-fold: Is this reputation changing and is this reputation becoming less deserved?
Some amount of copy-catting is certainly necessary and healthy to push horizons and to help competition keep things fresh. But that doesn't mean all copying is benign and healthful. Copying can certainly be tacky.
Most people seem to agree that some large companies copy not because they have something genuinely worthy of merit to bring to the table, but simply because they are very large, and can leverage some of the advantages of that largeness to horn in on the market. You can be certain that in these cases, said large companies will make the case that their differentiations are worthy, but that doesn't automatically make it so.
Schmidt's quotation is roughly true, obviously. But it's also something that you'd say to a group of people you wanted to motivate to continue to perform well even though some of the crew is growing restless. Many high performers would rather attempt visionary and trailblazing products rather than work on another boring me-too project.
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.
Remember that Google first attempted to acquire the "smaller competitor" and its offer was declined. Should Google just restrict itself not to compete in any space where there is a "smaller competitor"?
As long as the customer benefits (i.e., the behemoth actually innovates and doesn't kneecap the opposition), then the competitive marketplace is doing it's job.
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.
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.)
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.
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? ;))
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.
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?
yeah, 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.
Should 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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Maybe 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
I saw a big billboard ad for the Chrome browser on a UK motorway a couple of months ago. I was very surprised, at least until I saw an IE9 billboard in a petrol ('gas') station the other day.
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)
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.
This 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.
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 )
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?