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Google drops charges on shopping service to counter Amazon's surging ad sales

reuters.com

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Re: Google drops charges on shopping service to counter Amazon's surging ad sales

#3

Post by bearbin »

This is a good move but several years too late. Google has already squandered it's lead in shopping when they replaced an excellent shopping search engine with a crippled advertising board that neither shows the cheapest prices nor a wide variety of products to buy. This has been compounded by introducing absolutely no substantitive improvements to the product over the past few years.

Meanwhile, because nobody used the useless shopping search, the homepage search experience has been ruined by the assumption that every search is somebody who wants to buy something.

And let's not speak of the amazon/ebay duopoly that's developed. Google could have fought against that but chose not to in the hope of slightly increased advertising revenue.

Re: Google drops charges on shopping service to counter Amazon's surging ad sales

#4

Post by cultus »

josefresco wrote: post #2

IMHO this is a significant new "front" in Google's battle for online retail.

I feel like this is more akin to the Ardennes counteroffensive than anything that is likely to work. Google has just failed so utterly at shopping so far. Heck, they've failed at damn near everything they've done in the past decade, and have completely killed off developer goodwill at this point. Amazon is just a much smarter company that seems to outcompete them at every turn.

Re: Google drops charges on shopping service to counter Amazon's surging ad sales

#5

Post by Medicalidiot »

bearbin wrote: post #3

This is a good move but several years too late. Google has already squandered it's lead in shopping when they replaced an excellent shopping search engine with a crippled advertising board that neither shows the cheapest prices nor a wide variety of products to buy. This has been compounded by introducing absolutely no substantitive improvements to the product over the past few years. Meanwhile, because nobody used t…

I used to use Google shopping, or whatever it was branded back then, all the time as a second opinion. But its results became convoluted and simply bad. Slowly I drifted away in an unconscious decision until I read your comment and now I remember just how often I used it. Such a shame another Google product was ruined.

Re: Google drops charges on shopping service to counter Amazon's surging ad sales

#6

Post by corporateslave5 »

bearbin wrote: post #3

This is a good move but several years too late. Google has already squandered it's lead in shopping when they replaced an excellent shopping search engine with a crippled advertising board that neither shows the cheapest prices nor a wide variety of products to buy. This has been compounded by introducing absolutely no substantitive improvements to the product over the past few years. Meanwhile, because nobody used t…

Basically all of googles products produce significantly worse value for the consumer so that google can squeeze out extra profits. It’s only a matter of time before they start losing market share

Re: Google drops charges on shopping service to counter Amazon's surging ad sales

#10

Post by Icathian »

corporateslave5 wrote: post #6
bearbin wrote: post #3

This is a good move but several years too late. Google has already squandered it's lead in shopping when they replaced an excellent shopping search engine with a crippled advertising board that neither shows the cheapest prices nor a wide variety of products to buy. This has been compounded by introducing absolutely no substantitive improvements to the product over the past few years. Meanwhile, because nobody used t…

Basically all of googles products produce significantly worse value for the consumer so that google can squeeze out extra profits. It’s only a matter of time before they start losing market share

I would argue that GSuite, Google Drive, and Gmail (the only things I currently pay Google for) all offer pretty excellent value, even at the free tier (for those which have one).
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