'Google Offers' Will Offer More With New Deal Partners

Google Offers is upping the ante in the daily deals game as competitor Groupon tries to woo investors in an initial public offering of $11 billion.

Google is partnering with 14 other separate deals providers including Gilt City, PopSugar Shop, Plum District and Juice in the City. Google is also debuting the service in four new cities this week: San Jose, Sand Diego, Minneapolis and Baltimore.

Google Offers is a service launched earlier this year to compete with sites like Groupon and Living Social. The sites offer daily coupons on local goods and services, unusually restaurants or spas trying to attract new customers. Google tried to acquire in Groupon in 2010 with a $6 billion offer, but was declined.

Google wants to gain scale so that it can compete with Groupon and LivingSocial to have a large enough quantity of deals to be able to intelligently target their subscribers with specific deals, David Sinsky of Yipit told Reuters. Yipit aggregates daily deals and analyzes data on the industry.

These sites use sales staffs to find deals to fuel the daily coupons offered. Google has been growing their sales force somewhat slowly, and the new partnerships will bolster its offers is able to make, without increasing its sales staff dramatically. Google will continue to source deals from its existing sales force and likely share revenue with its partners.

Though some wonder if Groupon can now compete with the Internet giant, Groupon Chief Executive Andrew Mason didn't seem to be worried. He argued Groupon has a much bigger sales for than Google, recently reaching about 4,800 employees, which can suss out better deals.

Google Offers has also launched a quiz designed to tailor specific deals to the end user, avoiding coupons they don't want.

If deals aren't relevant or don't match your interests, they're spam, Nitin Mangtani, product manager for Google Offers, told CNET.

Google Offers is currently available in 17 cities such as San Francisco, Portland, Miami, Washington D.C., New York City and Seattle. It will be coming soon to 23 cities including Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Sacramento, Phoenix and St. Paul.

Users in the Bay Area will be seeing the effects of the increased amount of deal before other regions.