A handful of social commerce stories sketch some patterns forming in the daily deals space. Business Insider looks at Google Offers and finds some terms that merchants will like: Google apparently only takes a 20 percent cut of the deal, unlike the 50 percent that Groupon usually gets, and it pays merchants back faster, too. However, it also hears a story that implies an unscrupulous sales person is making search results-related promises that Google denies. LivingSocial is powering Amazon’s initial foray into daily deals, and early – make that “premature” – results from Seattle are promising. LivingSocial is also acquiring international deals companies for expansion. TechCrunch has been publishing a lot of negative analysis about daily deals, but it finally offers this piece from Crowd Cut that defends the market. Most of the “bad deals” stories I’ve seen come from merchants who don’t really know what they’re doing, though some got fooled by sales people.