While it seems like Amazon continues to take over the online shopping every year, Google isn’t going to just sit around and let that happen. The search engine giant appears to be teaming up with Walmart, Home Depot, Target, Costco and Ulta for a new project, Reuters reports.
These companies (and any others willing to take part) can index their catalogs with Google in search, and have their products show up in search whenever someone searches for stuff to buy. For Google, instead of receiving an ad fee, the company will just take a cut of the sales that are subsequently generated.
According to the report, it claims that Google is selling its new anti-Amazon tools because of its denominator search presence in the world. Voice is becoming increasingly important and more embedded into consumers’ lives, so it will help the reach giant better compete with Alexa as well with their Assistant. The project was discovered when people started noticing image search products appearing, or asking them where they could buy the item. Mind you, it wasn’t a small number of consumers either, rather tens of millions of people.
Have you ever noticed that your search normally starts with Google and ends at Amazon? You’re not alone. This generally takes out the traditional retailers from the brick-and-mortar world and puts Amazon in the front. The hope here is that not only will Google benefit from this by generating more leads for themselves, but also help traditional retailers get some business back that they’ve been losing to Amazon for years now. The heated battle between Google and Amazon will continue to grow as we’ve already seen previous back and forth between the two.