Amazon has jumped into the daily deals space, launching a coupon site called AmazonLocal.

The site, currently only available in Boise, Idaho, sells daily deal coupons for 50% or more savings at local businesses. If you happen to be in Boise and craving ice cream, today you can buy a $13 credit at Goody's for $6.

The buying experience is essentially the same as Groupon, except that Amazon is not actually selling a deal of its own. If you want the ice cream deal, you will be buying it from LivingSocial — the Groupon-like startup that Amazon put $175 million into this past December — using Amazon's platform.

It appears that Amazon is launching a deal aggregator rather than a deals product, though the company has not yet responded to a request for comment on that point (a spokesperson did confirm that AmazonLocal would be expanding to more cities "quickly").

A deals aggregator would certainly make sense for Amazon. Yelp, Facebook, Google and even media companies like The New York Times have all jumped on the Groupon bandwagon with daily deal products.

While startups like Yippit and Dealery are somewhat established daily deal aggregators, they make a much less intimidating cast of competitors — especially to the company that helped establish the very idea of an online marketplace.

Update: An Amazon spokesperson said that AmazonLocal will soon offer direct deals sourced by Amazon as well as deals from multiple providers.





