Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 108 posts

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

#91

Post by hsheheg »

reaperducer wrote: post #83
grawprog wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL google has a shopping service. Which is probably part of the problem. I had no idea google even had a shopping service. I don't think i've ever actually clicked the shopping tab before. I vaguely remember when I first noticed it existed, but even when i've been looking specifically to buy something online i've never even thought about using google shopping or even really considered its existence at all until seei…

TIL google has a shopping service TIL Google still has a shopping service. I used it once. I ordered something very basic from a local department store. Since it was a very common item, I expected it to be shipped from the department store down the street and I'd have it in a few days. Instead, it was shipped from a city over a thousand miles away and took almost two weeks to arrive. I went back to Amazon and never l…

Seems silly to blame google for that.

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

#92

Post by yhoneycomb »

hsheheg wrote: post #91
reaperducer wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL google has a shopping service TIL Google still has a shopping service. I used it once. I ordered something very basic from a local department store. Since it was a very common item, I expected it to be shipped from the department store down the street and I'd have it in a few days. Instead, it was shipped from a city over a thousand miles away and took almost two weeks to arrive. I went back to Amazon and never l…

Seems silly to blame google for that.

Yeah, I'm guessing the one further away was cheaper so google recommended it

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

#93

Post by Kuraj »

freehunter wrote: post #16
sudo-i wrote: post #11

Google dot com UI is growing ever closer to following in the footsteps of iTunes. It’s just becoming a cluttered mess and more confusing to users... I didn’t even know you could shop directly from the site.

The worst part is depending on your search all the different options can be in different order or sometimes not even show up. My UI pet peeve is inconsistency and Google has it in spades.

This feature is so annoying. It messes with my muscle memory (somehow after all these years I still expect Images to be second) and I end up clicking the wrong thing

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

#94

Post by rangibaby »

Scoundreller wrote: post #81
gen220 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This behavior is explained by the fact that these departments within Google are looking at their “rivals” for inspiration, rather than the fundamental problems Google is rewarded for solving (Search, targeted advertising, IT infrastructure). Nobody will remember it, but in eBay’s early days of success, Amazon spent a nontrivial amount of engineering effort into building an auction style marketplace. They actually bui…

I don’t remember anything about Amazon auctions, but Yahoo had a pretty good auction system, but it never took off.

Japan is in an alternate universe where Yahoo Auctions is the top dog and EBay is unknown

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

#95

Post by hammock »

Invictus0 wrote: post #75
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…

Can anyone recommend a better shopping search engine or price comparison tool?

A lot (unanimous?) of hate for Google Shopping in here. I actually think it's great. Amazon no longer has the lowest price on all kinds of different goods. So I use Google Shopping tab to price-compare across every possible retailer for, say, a specific rain jacket or a TV. There is some junk but if you mentally filter for online retailers you trust/have heard of, you can get a great deal compared to just running to Amazon sometimes. And the filters/search works reasonably well.

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

#96

Post by samfisher83 »

mywittyname wrote: post #57
buboard wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of them is profitable?

YouTube is the only product there that can stand on its own. The others are complimentary services that may not generate much revenue independently, but they add tremendous value to an ecosystem of complimentary products. Example, Android allows for traffic data to be sampled in real time, which is then sent to Maps.

Does YouTube generate a profit?

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

#97

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

samfisher83 wrote: post #96
mywittyname wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube is the only product there that can stand on its own. The others are complimentary services that may not generate much revenue independently, but they add tremendous value to an ecosystem of complimentary products. Example, Android allows for traffic data to be sampled in real time, which is then sent to Maps.

Does YouTube generate a profit?

Google doesn't disclose that, but it did say it generates around $15 billion a year in revenue, which ought to pay for a server or two:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...

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

#98

Post by lowdose »

gen220 wrote: post #31
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…

This behavior is explained by the fact that these departments within Google are looking at their “rivals” for inspiration, rather than the fundamental problems Google is rewarded for solving (Search, targeted advertising, IT infrastructure). Nobody will remember it, but in eBay’s early days of success, Amazon spent a nontrivial amount of engineering effort into building an auction style marketplace. They actually bui…

Could the biggest difference between Alphabet & Amazon come down to if the actual founder is still commanding the army? Bezos is probably a god within Amazon this could be a serious competitive advantage. I believe Zuckerberg and Musk also enjoy the force of good they have created themselves. I don't really understand why you would quit in such a position.

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

#99

Post by redis_mlc »

rangibaby wrote: post #94
Scoundreller wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t remember anything about Amazon auctions, but Yahoo had a pretty good auction system, but it never took off.

Japan is in an alternate universe where Yahoo Auctions is the top dog and EBay is unknown

eBay had issues with i18n and entered Japan 28 days after Yahoo auctions.

Oops!

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

#100

Post by redis_mlc »

samfisher83 wrote: post #96
mywittyname wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube is the only product there that can stand on its own. The others are complimentary services that may not generate much revenue independently, but they add tremendous value to an ecosystem of complimentary products. Example, Android allows for traffic data to be sampled in real time, which is then sent to Maps.

Does YouTube generate a profit?

I have followed it since before the purchase.

It appears it took a decade to reach profitability, but even now it piggybacks on the rest of the products infrastructure - standalone, I doubt it could be profitable.

Post reply on HN