Google has a new project in the works that appears to be a direct competitor to Groupon. It’s called Google Offers. According to an official fact sheet about the product, obtained by Mashable, Google Offers is "a new product to help potential customers and clientele find great deals in their area through a daily email."

Should Groupon have sold to Google when it had the chance? Share your thoughts.

This sounds exactly like Groupon, and based on the screenshot embedded in the document (view the whole thing here), it looks quite similar too. 

"For businesses, it’s a smart and easy way to find new high -value customers and bring them right to you," the sheet says. "With our prepaid model, there are no out-of-pocket expenses to spread the word about your business to the millions of Google users and subscribers in your local area. You only pay when a customer buys your offer."

Benefits mentioned in the document include: getting in front of potential customers in your city, bringing in both new and valuable customers with great deals, exposure across Google ad networks at no additional cost, managing your offer with tools to track and measure ROI, and getting paid quickly with no out-of-pocket expenses. 

It then proceeds to outline a five-step process for businesses to create an offer, market it, run the offer, collect the money, and serve customers. 

Now, the product is not widely available yet, but the company has confirmed that it is in fact real. Google gave Search Engine Land the following statement:

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. We do not have more details to share at this time, but will keep you posted.

So, the keyword there is "test", but it’s hard to imagine this not turning into a full-fledged offering, considering the company’s obvious thirst for jumping into this space. As you probably know, Google recently offered a reported $6 billion to acquire Groupon, the leader in the deals space, but Groupon turned it down, and is reportedly preparing for a $15 billion IPO. 

The question is: was Groupon smart to turn down Google’s offer? All valuations are based on growth, and a lot can happen in a year – especially a year when Google is one of your main competitors.  And Google already has a lot of relationships with businesses and users (through various products, search, business listings, advertising, etc.) that Groupon is still working on building. 

During Google’s earnings call, in which the company discussed the new changes in management, co-founder Sergey Brin alluded to some new products that are coming, but would not get specific. We wonder if this is one he was referring to.

Google’s former VP of Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer, who recently shifted to Google’s products and services related to local markets and geolocation, pointed out recently that Google already has Groupon-like products. 

"I think that when you look at our overall suite of services, especially around our advertising, we already have some things that are like this," Mayer said in an interview with Media Beat (embedded below). "We have things like coupons and offer extension ads that allow merchants to basically make offers to our users. So we’re looking at how we can take that technology and put it to use, especially in the location space."

Well, Google Offers would be a much more obvious product to compete in the space, and could only complement Google’s existing offerings, which span far and wide. According to Google’s earnings report for the fourth quarter of 2010, Google generated $8.44 billion in revenue. Obviously much of that is from advertising. You can see the exact breakdown as reported here. 

Google’s advertising reach is far and wide, and the company is increasingly returning local search results over true organic web results in general searches. If Google Offers gets incorporated into this (and it’s hard to imagine that it won’t), it’s going to be incredibly powerful. It’s worth noting that Google Offers also utilizes Google Checkout from the looks of the screenshot, but that’s another story. 

So, one has to wonder if Google made the right decision by rejecting Google’s offer. Should the company have accepted or does it have the power to remain a leader in the space? 

Groupon is rapidly expanding into more countries (sometimes by acquisition of other Groupon clones), and it just raised nearly a billion dollars in a recent round of funding. Groupon says it intends to use this toward fueling global expansion, investing in technology, and providing liquidity for employees and early investors. 

Groupon is also gearing up to advertise during the Super Bowl pre-game (the game itself was sold out). This should attract a lot of eyeballs, and could help spread the Groupon brand name to a lot more people who aren’t already using it. 

It’s also worth noting, however, that last year, Google ran it’s first-ever TV spot during the Super Bowl. The leak of Google Offers comes at an interesting time (just before the AFC and NFC championship games, which will determine who goes to the Super Bowl, to be played next month). Could Google have something in store for the Big Game this year? 

Before announcing his new role with the company, Eric Schmidt discussed the key points of Google’s strategy for 2011, and they are all about mobile. And where does local search work the best? 

Perhaps it’s premature to say, but Google may become a force to be reckoned with in the deals space that Groupon is currently enjoying. Google hasn’t had the best of luck in all of it’s endeavors, but this has potentially huge ties to both of the things Google is best at – search and advertising.  Plus, it’s not like acquiring more Groupon clones is out of the question. 

Related: If You’re Not Local, How Can You Compete in an Increasingly Local Google?

Will Google dominate the deals space? Tell us what you think in the comments, or join the discussion on our Facebook page.

Mozilla announced today that the next major version of Firefox is ready for testing. That would be Firefox 4 beta, and Mozilla says it includes faster start-up time and bookmarking, and that it caters to smoother complex animations. 

"Firefox 4 Beta is built for the way people use the Web today, offering more control over the browsing experience," the Mozilla team says. "It introduces a fresh new look and features like App Tabs and Panorama to make it easier and more efficient to navigate the Web. Firefox 4 Beta also includes performance enhancements to make everything faster from start-up time to page-load speed and the performance of Web applications and games. Firefox Sync is integrated into the browser with Firefox 4 Beta, giving you access to your Awesome Bar history, bookmarks, open tabs and passwords across computers and smartphones."

"Firefox 4 Beta also enables developers to create fun Web apps and websites," the team adds. "With full support for HTML5 features in Firefox 4 Beta, developers can create new ways for people to enjoy the Web. This includes WebM and HD video, 3D graphic rendering with WebGL, hardware acceleration and the Mozilla Audio API to help create visual experiences for sound. Director of Product Platform Management Chris Blizzard has a full overview of all developer tools in Firefox 4 Beta."

The beta can be downloaded here. It will be updated every few weeks so new features can be tested. If you’re having problems with your add-ons and the beta, there is an add-on compatibility reporter you can use to test them. 

The beta is available in over 50 languages, with more to come. While the beta is "feature complete", Mozilla says it will still look for ways to improve upon it for the Firefox 4 final release. 

Twitter has a two-pronged approach to give media companies the ability to create dynamic interfaces that filter and curate tweets in new ways. One is to showcase great examples of Twitter implementations on its Twitter Media blog, and the other is to give media companies the resources to do these types of projects on their own.

I spoke this week with Twitter’s Robin Sloan, who works in media partnerships, to find out more. He said the blog launched a few weeks ago and is aimed at media companies that want to build Twitter integration into their sites.

“It’s designed to be a spotlight and showcase for really good work,” he said.

Sloan and Twitter’s Chloe Sladden split the task of writing blog posts. Their goal is to update it daily and post an in-depth case study each week.

The Blog as a How-To Guide

The blog aims to be a practical how-to guide for creating projects, such as NBC’s Twitter interface for the Winter Olympics, and Sloan hopes that as people follow the blog, their imagination for what they can do with Twitter will become bigger and broader.

“The idea of lists of tweets on a web page; we can go well beyond that,” he said.

Some news sites have already done that. The Twitter Media blog highlights the Huffington Post’s Twitter Edition, in which nearly every page and section has Twitter integration. The site uses a mixture of Twitter’s API, @anywhere, and Twitter lists. Sloan said you can’t tell where The Huffington Post stops and where Twitter begins.

The Huffington Post uses @anywhere Hover Cards on its Twitter lists and the “Hot on Twitter” section of the site is content that’s “selected and organized based on tweet volume,” according to the Twitter Media blog. Sloan said the depth that The Huffington Post has achieved is what they are aiming to get more people to do.

One of the main functions of the blog is to walk producers and developers through how to do one of these projects so they can learn from them.

“On our site, we explain the process,” Sloan said.

The Twitter Media site gets its blog content from partnerships that have launched, and by searching for great examples and from others’ tips. Sloan said they increasingly want to use Twitter itself as a way to get great usage tips on both big and small projects.

“My hope is we can get a lot of stuff that way,” he said.

Why Launch a Media Blog?

The activities of celebrities and reporters can be a strong connection point for new Twitter users to get on board and stay there. Twitter launched their media-focused blog because news organizations and TV personalities have been really aggressive in adopting innovative uses for Twitter, according to Sloan.

“We find media can be a good bridge for users of Twitter,” he said. “We’d like to be able to leverage that to get them to be Twitter users.”

Twitter can help improve journalism, he added, and they would like to assist media companies such as The New York Times in doing better journalism.

In order to better help news organizations, Twitter needs to understand what the media needs. Sloan said there are tools out there that aren’t built by Twitter to help people solve problems.

Sloan told me that in about a week, Twitter Media will launch a directory of tools, platforms and services to better help journalists find the third-party apps that will be useful to them.

For more social media coverage, follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

More Twitter resources from Mashable:

- How Journalists are Using Social Media for Real Results

- How Companies Should Approach the New Twitter Advertising Model

- 4 Tips for Tapping Into Twitter Conversations

- HOW TO: Spring Clean Your Twitter Account

- 10 Dos and Don’ts for Brands on Twitter

Reviews: Facebook, Twitter

Tags: blog, journalism, media, social media, twitter

I blog and social bookmark everyday along with submitting to as many directories as possible. I don’t have the budget for a good PPC campaign, so I was wondering if there was a new or better way to drive traffic to my site. Something other than bought traffic too.

Video marketing with YouTube and other video sharing sites would be a good idea. But you will need really good videos that attract attention without being irrelevant to your site.