Google expanded its local bargains program to five more cities Wednesday in a challenge to online deals giants Groupon and LivingSocial.

Google expanded its local bargains program to five more cities Wednesday in a challenge to online deals giants Groupon and LivingSocial.

Google said it had begun offering the deals from in Austin, Texas, Boston, Denver, Seattle, and the nation's capital, Washington.

launched a test of the service called Google Offers in Portland, Oregon, in June and expanded it to San Francisco and New York a month later.

Google's offers on Wednesday included $10 dollars worth of food and drink for $5 at a Mexican restaurant in Austin and $20 dollars worth of merchandise for $5 at the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver.

Google's expansion of Google Offers comes less than two weeks after social network titan Facebook announced that it was ending a similar Facebook Deals program launched in April.

began testing deals in April in five US cities -- Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego, and San Francisco -- in a bid to expand its beyond advertising and carve out a niche in the growing online bargain space.

Chicago-based Groupon has enjoyed a spectacular rise since its founding in 2008 and rejected a reported $6 billion takeover offer from Google last year.

Groupon announced plans in June to go public but The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that it was re-evaluating the plans because of the volatility in the .

(c) 2011 AFP