Google is willing to pour $500 million in its new Shopping Express in order to begin an e-commerce war with Amazon, according to reports.
Google, which rules search, has one real competitor for e-commerce, and that's Amazon which still rules product searches, according to the Re/Code. Now the tech titan is going to invest as much as $500 million to grow the service to compete with Amazon.
“You can very much expect that we are putting a lot of money into this and we’re excited and willing to sustain that investment over time as this gets going,” Tom Fallows, head of Google Shopping Express, told the Re/Code.
As we reported before, Google has expanded its delivery operation and is now eyeing the $600 billion grocery market and promising same-day service. Google is also wanting some of the $3.5 billion "direct-response digital ads" that consumers are supposed to be clicking on to buy products.
U.S. & World
“Google can’t give up on product search and this is another pathway to closing the loop for advertisers,” Keith Anderson, a vice president at the consulting firm RetailNet Group, told the Re/Code “They failed on the payments side in stores, but if they can use expedited delivery as a way to get it then they’ll keep on being willing to spend.”
However, Google doesn't have giant warehouses and inventory like Amazon, so it must rely on retailers to supply its products, so Google may never be able to compete directly with the e-commerce giant.
