Application for “online marketplace” describes group buying system.
Long before Groupon took the idea of group buying of services and gift certificates mainstream, many people have tried group buying for physical goods. Remember Mercata, which shut down in the .com bust?
Now Google has filed a patent application for an “online marketplace”, which is effectively a group buying marketplace.
The application (12/876725) was filed in 2010 but just published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark office today (pdf).
It describes a system in which product sellers and buyers bid to find a discount price for bulk sales. An example in the application describes a retailer who’s willing to give a 1% discount for a monthly sales volume of $100,000, a 5% discount at $500,000, and a 12% discount at $1,000,000.
Although the idea isn’t exactly what Groupon and other daily deals sites are based on, I’m sure there are some claims in this patent application that could be tied to the daily deals phenomenon.
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