All the giants of the web have been eager to get involved with the world of “daily deals.” However, the deal industry has no desire to hand over the reigns, even going so far as turning down a whopping $6 billion deal from Google. Google has gradually been adding deal services of their own, and rumors abound on the front of possible acquisitions and upcoming features. Bing, however, is no slacker. They’ve already released their own “deal solution.”
Bing isn’t created their own product or service. Rather, they’re partnering up with roughly a half-dozen of the best established named in the industry. This includes Groupon, Living Social, and The Dealmap. So, what’s Bing’s angle? Rather than trying to collect more deals, it’s aggregating information from all the major sites, becoming a new and powerful distribution mechanism. Bing deal searches will now allow users to find all the top coupons in their area.
The parntership has allowed Bing to come to over 14,000 different metro areas, and the search company asserts that most deals will be in the “30% to 50% off” region. What’s more, users will be able to access these deals both on the mobile and desktop search platforms.
The existing social features – such as the ability to quickly “like” pages through Bing’s Facebook partnership– along with the major audience that Bing already reaches, makes teaming with the Microsoft search engine a no-brainer for these deal companies. This continues a trend of practical non-competition for Bing; we’ve seen similar aggregation tactics in their Yahoo deal, their travel search pages, their entertainment info, and more. Bing is increasingly becoming a well-organized, well-integrated front end for other services – allowing it to remain “non-threatening” enough to appeal to partners, and useful enough to siphon off Google searchers.
[via the Bing Blog]
