Shopping? Where do you start--Google or Amazon?
Google's Plan to Snatch Shopping from Amazon Is Working | Wired Business | Wired.com: " . . . online shoppers today tend to start in one of two places for product information: Google or Amazon. In effect, Amazon has become a “commerce search engine,” which cuts into Google’s core function. To compete, Google wants to give shoppers every reason not to go straight to Amazon by becoming as reliable a destination not just to learn about products, but to buy them. “What you’re going to see them do is do everything they can to enable marketers to sell through their platform,” Lawson says. Not that Google likely plans to set up its own warehouses, he says. But he adds that the days when merchants see Google as a conduit for clicks to their own sites is fading. If Google can package the sale from search to checkout, merchants can handle the inventory and shipping themselves. If Google and retailers — especially brick-and-mortar Amazon competitors — can come together in that way, suddenly online shoppers have another broad, deep Amazon alternative. At the same time, Lien says, the competition between Google and Amazon isn’t all-or-nothing. Shoppers are too smart for that. “Consumers are looking on Amazon and they’re looking on Google,” Lien says. “I think most thoughtful consumers are to take the best deal.”
You would think Walmart, or some other big retailer (with warehouses and distribution) would be dying to partner with Google.
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