Google has just launched their shopping platform for users in USA. This platform gives users personalised shopping suggestions based on their previous web activity. Unlike Amazon, Google is not storing these products with them, and neither are they shipping it, but they are offering a “Buy with Google Guarantee”, through which customers can claim a refund if they don’t get a timely and accurate delivery.
Why is Google doing this though?
In the recent years, product searches for shopping have been declining on Google, as more and more shoppers are increasingly searching directly on Amazon. As such, companies have moved their advertising budgets to Amazon from Google. Earlier, while they wanted to appear higher on Google’s search results, now they want to appear higher on Amazon’s search result. For instance, take the example of a business selling jeans for men. By spending advertising money on Amazon, their brand and products would appear higher in Amazon’s search results.
With Facebook owned Instagram also recently launching in-app e-commerce, Google needed to not only win back product searches from Amazon, but also fend-off Instagram’s growing efforts in this space.
This will be integrated into YouTube as well, which means users will be able to buy products they see in videos without leaving the website. This has also been inspired by Instagram’s in-app shopping experience where users can buy a dress that an influencer is wearing.
A Google executive was quoted saying : “It is not surprising that Google would want to protect its advertising turf.” The executive added “Google has a long way to go before competing with Amazon as a shopping destination.”
As an user, you can expect most of Google’s properties like images, youtube, maps to become shoppable very soon!
