The Deals Frenzy

Both Google and Facebook plunged into the daily deals pool within days of each other, respectively launching Google Offers and Deals on Facebook. Both launches will remain relatively limited in their geographic scope at the outset, with Google testing the waters in Portland, Oregon to start and Facebook’s new feature rolling out first in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco. But the massive userbases of both companies make each of them legitimate forces in the space led by Groupon and LivingSocial. Groupon, meanwhile, wasted no time in answering with a new launch of its own — the real-time deals, location-based spinoff service called Groupon Now.