Not too long ago Wired ran an article on five Google products at risk. One of these at risk products was Google Offers. I think Wired was right. Google seems to be heading in another direction.

That direction is Google Local. Google is moving to a retailer self-service model. Not really surprising. I never really thought that Google liked the high touch sales effort of the deal marketplace model.

Google Local is distributing offers though Google Maps for Android. Within Google Places merchants can set their own promotional offers, set a promotional period, and cap the number of promotions that consumers can use. They have adopted a ScoutMob like "Use Now" button. Currently there is no cost to merchants to place a promotion during the "trial" period, which if it is anything like betas at Google could go on for a long, long time.

It will be interesting to see how this pivot works for them.