Ya,but if she is searching for a product on the net and gets a coupon in the process that is pretty cool

i personally have not gave any good recommendations for google maps yet because i have had bad direction from them and better from mapquest. that is so far, anyway... but maybe this new deal will change my mind

Steve, is your Granny web savvy with her shopping? If so, she should check out CouponCabin.com. This is a site that scours and collects discount codes from more than 800 general or specialty retailers of all kinds. The site allows you to look for savings opportunities by store or by category. It is a good place to start an online shopping quest.

I'll let her know right after I stamp "spam" on her forehead.

Often consult your grandmother for analysis of new technologies, do you? If she needed a dog groomer and searched on google with her zipcode to find the nearest ones, and was thusly presented with a coupon for one, would you think she'd use it? I know my grandmother uses the yellow pages, but that's why I typically don't ask her about cutting edge internet technology.

Steve, your story about your grandparents warmed my heart. My grandma is 86 and from the West Indies. She too, chews the marrow from bones. I'm also amazed by her picking up pennies from the streets of NYC when she encounters them. Each year, she accumilates appx. $12-15's worth of pennies. Once she fills up her large jar, I make a special visit just to sit down and chat with her while we roll up those pennies for her to take to the bank. And for both our grandma's sake, I'll actually look for those coupons and use a few of them (even though I'm making more than the average coupon clipper's salary).

I suspect that 84 year old grandmothers are not exactly the demographic Google was going after, so perhaps I'm missing your point. Personally, coupons are a huge hassle, even if they are delivered to your mailbox in living color. All coupons prove is that people are willing to spend valuable time to cut them out along the dotted line and stick them in their purse or wallet. So I spend 15 minutes sorting through a bazillion coupons in the Sunday paper, to save 12 cents on a can of corn and 35 cents on toothpaste. Is that time well spent? The average coupon return rate is something like 2% (and that's a good coupon). There must be another way.

My husband is not granny age; but I have seen him buy $60.00 worth of food and spend $2.00 after all the coupons, and store deals. I personally hate coupons and grocery shopping; but I will save them for him; he loves shopping.

Possibly the right demographic, but absolutely the wrong type of shopping. Google's coupons are going after the savvy online shopper who's looking for a nearby solution to a not-common purchase. Daily grocery shopping will ~not~ be covered. When you hit the grocery store, you already know where it is, you already know what you're going to purchase, and you usually already have all of the coupons you're likely to be using. As Google themselves suggested, this is going to start by covering things you would actually search out on a map. Car washes, dog groomers, tire sales; those are the sorts of things that would be best served by such coupon services. As for online maps and the directions they give... if you know how to read a map, you don't ~need~ their directions. I use Google maps for all of my US mapping needs. I find Mapquest to be much less useful for the same applications.

I think some of the other commentors are missing the point I found in your essay. People don't connect maps to coupons. If I'm going shopping I'm going to places I already know how to get to. The google model for connecting the customer to the coupon is flawed. Harbor Freight tools does it right. They have my email. They know I like tools. They send me coupons. No ValPak. No google maps.

Steve, is there any particular reason that the vast majority of your Google posts have a negative slant toward the company? Can you explain this? What bone do you have to pick with a couponing feature? Why is your grandmother deemed the target audience for this? Your logic is completely off base here.

Negative?! I think my post insinuating Google was involved in a menage-a-trois makes up for any poo poo-ing on my part. I mean, how rad is that? But seriously. If Google would just do something bad ass -- like, say, dig up neo-nazi gold in a suburban backyard -- then maybe I'd have more nice things to say.

For years, Val-Pak and similar direct mail co-op ad providers have had Web presence for their offers. It's probably likely Granny hasn't used them, either. With the integration to mapping (and the next logical step, GPS-driven mobile offer functionality) my thought is that Google is trying to reach the parent who wants to pick up a pizza on the way home or the traveler who wants to find a dry cleaning deal close by when in a strange city. The offers are there where and when the consumer wants them. Well-established in their direct mail niche, Val-Pak benefits from name recognition and the ability to reach those who don't have time to open the blue envelope at home. If this is their goal, the new service seems a viable way to reach it.