« Elementary worldly wisdom | Main | Microsoft's Apple strategy »

Google Supermarket

March 16, 2006

Google's much-discussed but little-used Google Base appears to have even bigger ambitions than previously speculated. The company's top man in Europe, Nikesh Arora, divulged yesterday that Google is planning to turn Base into a full-fledged retailing platform, at least in Europe. It would thus compete head-on with other retailing platforms such as Amazon's and eBay's.

Arora told the Financial Times

that Google wanted companies in retail – and possibly sectors such as real estate – to submit details of their goods and prices [to Base]. Google would index and package the information into a consumer-friendly search engine, giving its users a virtual supermarket across a number of retail brands. Mr Arora said: “Google Base is going to have a huge impact on retailers,” adding that the move reflected internal research, which found many leading European retailers did not feel they were competitive enough online.

It's a mystery to me how search-engine shopping would improve the competitiveness of individual retailers. It seems more like a means of further reducing e-commerce to an endless, automated price war - ruinous rivalry on steroids. But maybe there's more to the story. A major UK retailer told the FT that "Google’s retail offer would be of interest if the internet company could also arrange for distribution." That's a prospect that should strike terror into the hearts of Google investors. Google Prime, anyone?

Advertisement: Coming this spring: Nicholas Carr's new book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Preorder now from Amazon.

Comments

Posted by: Don Marti at March 16, 2006 03:47 PM

let me know how u come up with article ideas

Posted by: brin at March 16, 2006 05:56 PM

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?


 Subscribe to Rough Type

Nick's next book:
shallowscoverthumb2.jpg

Nick's latest book: bigswitchcover2thumb.jpg "Future Shock for the web-apps era" -Fast Company

"Ominously prescient" -Kirkus Reviews

"Riveting stuff" -New York Post

Order from Amazon

Visit Big Switch site

Read Q&A with Nick

Greatest hits

The amorality of Web 2.0

Twitter dot dash

The engine of serendipity

The editor and the crowd

Avatars consume as much electricity as Brazilians

The great unread

The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock's avatar

Flight of the wingless coffin fly

Sharecropping the long tail

The social graft

Steve's devices

MySpace's vacancy

The dingo stole my avatar

Excuse me while I blog

Other writing

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

The ignorance of crowds

The recorded life

The end of corporate computing

IT doesn't matter

The parasitic blogger

The sixth force

Hypermediation

More

Nick's first book: Order from Amazon

Visit book site

Rough Type is:

Written and published by
Nicholas Carr

Designed by

JavaScript must be enabled to display this email address.

What?