Bing Launches a Daily Deals Section

Yesterday it was the august New York Times sniffing that it would soon launch an “upscale” and “curated” daily deals program for what it sees as its highly select and discerning audience, rather than the masses that flock to the likes of Groupon.

Coming back down to earth, Microsoft's Bing today announced it's launching daily deals for the desktop and mobile (m.bing.com), claiming to offer more than 200,000 unique offers in more than 14,000 cities across the United States.

Bing is assembling all these deals from existing sites, including Groupon, Living Social and Restaurant.com, it said, “ making it easier to discover, share and search for the best deals in your area – all from one place.”

Bing is partnering with The Dealmap to launch Bing deals. Dealmap already assembles daily offerings from other deal sites and says it has its own Deal Heroes, stealthy undercover operatives who sleuth out the best buys around town.

And what of Google, Bing's arch rival in the online search business?

No one quite knows. There have been reports that Big G is working on a Groupon-like program and supposedly has talked with businesses around its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters but that seems to be all anyone knows at the moment.