SHOTS FIRED!
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29609472 |
"Many people think our main competition is Bing or Yahoo. But, really, our biggest search competitor is Amazon. People don't think of Amazon as search, but if you are looking for something to buy, you are more often than not looking for it on Amazon. They are obviously more focused on the commerce side of the equation, but, at their roots, they are answering users' questions and searches, just as we are."
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Google Amazon competition: How Amazon Prime delivery hurts Google’s ad business. |
Google is making same-day delivery on Google Express available for three different prices: a flat rate of $4.99 per order, a monthly membership fee of $10, or an annual membership fee of $95. These numbers are hardly incidental--$95 is a shade cheaper than the $99 fee for a yearlong membership on Amazon Prime and significantly less than the $299 fee for Amazon Prime Fresh, a same-day delivery service for groceries and other "eligible orders" more than $35 on Amazon. (Amazon's same-day delivery option is also available in 14 cities to Prime members for a flat $5.99 fee.)
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What this means is that Google Express might not really be about delivery first and foremost--instead, it might be about protecting the company's core business by giving people another reason to stay on Google for their Internet searches. Each time someone searches for a product on Amazon instead of Google, the search giant loses a chance to serve up advertisements along with the search results. And advertisements, not toothpaste delivery, is still Google's big business. Google is afraid of becoming the middleman that gets cut out.
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"Research by the Forrester group found that last year almost a third of people looking to buy something started on Amazon--that's more than twice the number who went straight to Google," Schmidt noted in his speech. |
Anyone else on WF use Amazon Prime a lot? Has anyone on WF used any "Google Express" services like mentioned in the articles? I've always thought Amazon is the company Google should "fear" when it comes to search, now it is interesting to see Schmidt and Bezos discussing this kind of thing out in the open a lot more. Makes me wonder how things like Uber/self-driving technology could play into these kinds of services in the future too.
