Google Enters the Game

So, rumors have been floating around that Google will be offering a service similar to Amazon Prime's shipping. For an annual fee, products will be shipped to you same-day or one day later. This would beat Amazon Prime's free shipping, taking 2 days. While it may not seem like a big difference, same-day shipping would be a huge game changer. It would eliminate much hesitation of online shopping because of the waiting for the product. With Google essentially dominating the search market, the stores that will use this service will probably have precedence over other shopping sites. Whether that is good or bad, I don't know. People will complain but Google does have the right to rank sites, just like the algorithms they use to best search for what you're looking for. This may also make shopping online simpler.

While I think this Google service would be great, it's hard for me to think that it would compete with Amazon Prime with just the shipping since Prime offers movies (Very limited) and great television shows. But Google has many brands it can take advantage of, including YouTube. With YouTube going very commercial, Google can offer some movies and television shows on YouTube included with the shipping service. Or even take ads off for registered users (I may consider it if it does, those ads are the worst. It grinds my gears that it has ads because YouTube got big in result of watching tons of videos in a short amount of time). Since Google just launched their Music store, maybe offer a limited streaming with the shipping service.

Will this replace stores? Of course not, people want to try clothes on making sure they fit and look good. People like to feel and touch what they're buying. The need to have things immediately will never disappear. But this is a step closer to a more simple way to shop online.

Google may offer a service where you can have a shopping cart where the items are from multiple stores, and you can buy the items at one time (No more entering information for every store! I'm pretty sure I've memorized my credit card number because of entering it so many times). Maybe then picking them up at the individual stores or just shipping them to your place; the combination of the two. Or have a central location close to customer, where they can pick up all the items (Gathered together from local stores). But those are just my thoughts. There are many flaws in them, including marketing your own company and making it different from the rest of the companies in the service. There are so many potential paths Google can take this, and I look forward to seeing what they do in the near future (Maybe get this in before Christmas?).