It appears that Google’s coupon service Offers, is live, starting in in Portland, Oregon. You also have the ability to subscribe to deals in areas within New York City, Oakland and San Francisco. The sign-up is live but the service is launching “soon.”
On the landing page of the Offers site, you are greeted with this “Google Offers BETA is starting in Portland, Oregon. Get 50% off or more at places you’ll love.” You can then subscribe to the offers with your email.
Update: Google issued this statement about Offers: Today we launched a marketing campaign inviting Portlanders to sign up for a test of Google Offers — to get great deals delivered right to their inboxes. Offers is part of an ongoing effort at Google to make new services that give consumers great deals while helping connect businesses with customers in new ways.
Google tells us that this part of a marketing campaign to publicize offers andusers can sign up for future launch of Offers beta, with Portland as first city you’ll be able to access Google Offers. Google is also starting to push radio advertisements on Pandora to users in Portland.
Here’s a newly uploaded video advertisement for Offers.
As we reported in late January, Googlewas preparing to launch a pre-paid offers product called Google Offers which is supposed to more Groupon-like in that the deal must be paid for in advance in order to redeem it. From the sounds of it, it looks like this could be Google’s Groupon competitor. Considering that you have to subscribe to the emails, get 50 percent-plus discounts, it sounds like the two could be the same.