Will Google's free coupon service slam the newspaper biz?

As Tom Taulli wrote this morning, Google has entered the couponing market with its local search product. As such, Google hopes to further entrench itself into a more localized and customized presence with consumers. While a global presence -- hence, it's search engine -- is by no means a declining market, Google probably hopes to slip into the consumer mind from a localized perspective. I've written before that while Google News, for example, is a great aggregator of news information in many categories, the one thing many print newspapers have on Google is local flair and favor, including local columnists and so forth. Newspaper circulation, while declining in many areas due to cable news and Internet news sources, has a great stab at not becoming irrelevant soon. That is, to keep the localized feel relevant to readers who expect the content they cannot get anywhere else.

Many millions of newspaper subscribers receive the weekend (Sunday edition) newspaper for one very important reason -- the advertisements and coupons. What if Google began offering coupons to online merchants? It has entered the market for doing just that as of this morning. When a search is performed at Google Maps, printable coupons will soon appear alongside map search results, as Google courts more local-searching customers and also recruits more small businesses into its network. With Google saying that half of the small businesses in the U.S. don't even have a website, this is a lucrative piece of revenue Google is losing by not making those businesses appear anywhere on the Google network.

If the website does not exist, it can't be indexed by Google, in other words. With local coupons and possibly more small businesses coming into the Google fold soon, will these further speed the demise of the printed newspaper? That's a good question, as there are still many positive aspects about viewing and clipping physical coupons from newspapers that cannot be duplicated by an online alternative. The question to Google is this: What are those positive aspects, and how can they be challenged?

Brian White has worked in various executive positions in technology and telecommunications and now focuses on editing and writing.