Microsoft on Thursday announced the launch of Bing Offers in the US. The site aggregates deals from “a broad set of partners” including what the company claims are many of the “leading local deal providers.”
Bing Offers’ features are as follows:
- All your favorite deals in one place: You no longer need to browse through different websites, manage multiple sign-ups or sift-through your inbox. Bing Offers aggregates popular deals across the US to help you discover great deals at the right time and place.
- Quickly find the deals you are looking for: Search for your favorite deals by using any business name, category or keyword. Not looking for a specific deal? Then filter out irrelevant offers by location or category including: food, activities, health & fitness, beauty, travel, retail & services.
- Available on any device: The Bing Offers experience works seamlessly across tablets, mobile devices, and PCs, so you can use access great deals regardless of where you are.
That last point is an odd one: tablets are both mobile devices (according to most people) and PCs (according to many others, especially Microsoft), but I digress. Here’s what the service looks like on a desktop:
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In short, Microsoft is trying to create a hub for all your deals. If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is: Microsoft launched a service called Bing Deals back in March 2011.
It appears that Bing Offers is more focused on local. Here’s Microsoft’s pitch:
All of us love getting great deals. However, the difficulty lies in finding the right deal for something you need. If you are looking for tasty treats, fun activities or a relaxing spa, need to fix your home or automobile or just want some retail therapy, Bing Offers provides simple ways to discover the best deals closest to you.
This is a huge undertaking by Microsoft as it will require a constantly-updating algorithm to surface the most relevant deals to as many people as possible. Mind you, the process is very similar to Web search, so the Bing tie-up makes perfect sense.
Yet there’s one more little something that makes this perfect to be a Bing service: the US limitation. While we understand Microsoft wants to test this service locally before an international rollout, we hope Offers doesn’t stay stateside too long, as many Bing features often do.
Update at 1:50 PM EST – As pointed out by TechCrunch, Bing offers is the successor to Bing Deals. That service is no more.
Top Image Credit: Robert Scoble
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