Hey, it’s another daily deals site.  At this rate, will anyone ever pay full price ever again?

Gird your loins, Groupon — Google’s contribution to the packed daily deals arena, Offers, just launched.  Granted, the site’s still in beta, and only serves Portland to boot — but other cities are coming soon. New Yorkers and Northern Californians can subscribe to offers of “50% off or more,” coming soon to San Francisco, the Bay Area, and Manhattan (which is already broken down by Uptown, Midtown, and Downtown).

We’re not the least bit surprised that the search behemoth developed its own coupon site.  But we have two questions: 1) What took Google this long to get into the daily deals biz? And 2) How are they going to use their algorithm know-how to offer a unique product?  LivingSocial is hot on the heels of Groupon, and myriad other daily deals sites already exist — Google must have some kind of trick up its sleeve to separate itself from the pack.