Google is Essentially Building an Anti-Amazon Alliance, and Target is the Latest To Join (recode.net) 94
Google and the country's biggest brick-and-mortar retailers have one main problem in common: Amazon. Now both sides are acting like they are serious about working together to do something about it. From a report: On Thursday, Target and Google announced that they are expanding what was a years-old delivery partnership from a small experiment in a handful of cities to the entire continental U.S. The expansion will allow Target to become a retail partner in Google's voice-shopping initiative, which lets owners of the Google Home "smart" speaker order items through voice commands like owners of the Echo can do from Amazon. The announcement comes seven weeks after Walmart inked a similar deal with Google to offer hundreds of thousands of products through the service. Other big-box retailers like Home Depot are also on board. Voice commerce was the core of these recent announcements, and it may someday become popular for types of shopping like reordering household staples. But that's not what is most interesting here to me. Instead, it's the promise that Target is also beginning to work with Google "to create innovative digital experiences using ... other cutting-edge technologies to elevate Target's strength in style areas such as home, apparel and beauty."
Scroggling Part 2!! (Score:1)
Looks like Amazon is about to get Scroogled!!
Here's a odd idea: (Score:3)
Why not create a competitive service? -_-
Re:Here's a odd idea: (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not create a competitive service? -_-
That's essentially what Google is doing, but without the investment in infrastructure and in most cases inventory, because they don't handle fulfilment, only ordering - their retail partners handle the heavy lifting.
This sort of thing could conceivably put a serious dent in Amazon's business. Perhaps not much initially, but eventually the loss of sales will be noticed.
Amazon has a lot going for it, but a lot of "baggage" as well in terms of their impact on small and large retailers alike. Their quest for World Domination(tm) may come back to bit them. Or take a small nip in their shins...
Re:Here's a odd idea: (Score:5, Insightful)
Their quest for World Domination(tm) may come back to bit them.
But Google's quest for world domination won't?
I have a hard time seeing how people who would like to avoid Amazon for being monopolistic would be OK with Google's monopolistic tendencies.
Re:Here's a odd idea: (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, with Google, it looks like the brick & mortar stores will live on, at least for now. Amazon would kill them all, asap.
Only time will tell if Google will co-exist in a symbiotic relationship with them or is it parasitic.
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But it looks like Google is only teaming up with the big box retailers. If preserving brick and mortar businesses is a priority, that's pretty weak sauce.
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It's less about the consumer impression and more about the business impression.
If you are target, the situation with Amazon is looking grim. Google sounds like a household name that is less overtly threatening, so for now, an alliance.
WalMart is interesting as they recently bought Jet to compete with Amazon on more equal footing, and hypothetically they would have more control over their destiny that way, but probably a wise idea to hedge their bets.
The brick and mortar thing is nice for me as there is at
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Their quest for World Domination(tm) may come back to bit them.
But Google's quest for world domination won't?
A competitive duopoly is much better for consumers than a monopoly. Even more players would be better, but network effects are going to inherently favor the emergence of a small number of big online retail and distribution systems. Two major competitors with a handful of minor players seems to be the common pattern that emerges.
It has been looking like we were running headlong toward an online retail monopoly, and I don't see how anyone other than Google (or maybe Microsoft... but it would be much tougher
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A competitive duopoly is much better for consumers than a monopoly.
Well, yes, a duopoly is better than monopoly, but not by very much. If a duopoly is firmly established, then the two tend to start colluding and generally acting together as a monopoly.
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A competitive duopoly is much better for consumers than a monopoly.
Well, yes, a duopoly is better than monopoly, but not by very much. If a duopoly is firmly established, then the two tend to start colluding and generally acting together as a monopoly.
If they're colluding, they're not a competitive duopoly.
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Indeed so!
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Did you not even bother to read the summary? That is exactly what they are trying to do with these retail partners.
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That is exactly what they are trying to do
No it isn't. They're prattling on about this "voice-shopping" gimmick, augmented-reality mumble mumble... No mention of delivery performance, one place they could really outflank Amazon. This isn't competitive with Amazon. Not even a little. Amazon has got USPS delivering stuff on SUNDAY ffs.
This is a celebrity executive wankfest. These retailers aren't yet hurting badly enough to get serious so they're still playing games. You'll know they've stopped screwing around when you can fill a cart online
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Also, a coherent and deep unified shopping experience.
Google shopping is crappy. It's damn near useless for researching a product or browsing categories. Forget ordering. Voice shopping is a gimmick that is only barely good enough for repeat purchases of cheap consumable goods even if you liked it. AR and all is neat I suppose, but they are so far off the fundamentals.
If they had pretty much the amazon experience with "select a local store to instantly pick up form", that would be a serious threat, but
Anti-Not Google (Score:1)
I'd love nothing but be a (Score:2)
Target by the G Men in my own house.
Sorry, Google (Score:5, Insightful)
A year or so ago, I would have welcomed this -- but since then, you've done pretty much everything in your power to burn your bridge with me. And you've succeeded.
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I’m sure Larry and Sergey will be absolutely devastated once they hear about this. How will Google ever survive without JohnFen as a user?
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We could start a gofundme for them!
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They are. They'll never say it out loud, but you can see it in their eyes.
Re:Sorry, Google (Score:4, Insightful)
James Damore did not say what most people think he said. He did not say women are unsuited for tech jobs. He did not say women only have tech jobs due to affirmative action. That is all bullshit piled on by those mau-mauing him, in an effort to expel someone whose questioning made them uncomfortable.
Why it made them uncomfortable is the fascinating part of all this.
It makes them uncomfortable because it shatters the brittle shell of their enforced narrative, which can only be kept by keeping everyone from saying anything against it. It is very much a "the king is naked" situation. If James Damore is allowed to say men and women are different, the entire project of feminism shatters.
And yet everyone who doesn't live in academia or in a social justice echo chamber knows that men and women are different. If you think statistically different from men means inferior, then YOU are the misogynist.
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Umm, did you mean to reply to my comment? It seems entirely unrelated.
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He jumped to a conclusion about why you would hate Google, because evidently he doesn't notice anything else to be concerned about.
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You are mistaken. Damore plays no role in my opinion of Google.
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Oh, and if you look at his later twitter posts that show that he's totally enamored with KKK, you can clearly understand why he was fired. He's an asshole.
Doomed (Score:5, Insightful)
So I have to have a google bug device and struggle with a "voice" interface buy stuff... this is DOA. Just put in my regular not-mobile web browser with a fast, full size, not-flat, non-suck UI. Make EVERYTHING in Target/Home Depot/Walmart have accurate stock levels and be same-day delivery from this site. That's how you compete with bleeping Amazon.
that is fine with me (Score:3)
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Yeah, at some point, Amazon started getting a ton of Chinese vendors, and so you have to be much more careful now. The days when you can just blindly place an order are gone -- now you have to actually pay attention to who the order is going to.
Weirdly, I've even ordered stuff from Chinese vendors on eBay and had the order fulfilled through Amazon!
I've got zero brand loyalty (Score:3)
Still, I wonder what happened that killed brand loyalty so completely. I'm guessing the crap economy and declining wages mean folks pinch pennies a lot harder. Maybe general cynicism but that could be chocked up to the wage thing too.
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I'm an old fart, but I've never had brand loyalty as such. The very idea always struck me as bizarre.
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I will say it's a convenience to keep more loose track of a market and get to kind of trust a brand instead.. Apart from being sold off, a brand tends to evolve slowly in quality, so if I have a good experience with a brand, I'll tend to get lazy on research and stay with it unless I see news that they got bought, they carry more than a 15% premium, or I clearly notice a decline or hear of a decline... then I start seriously evaluating again.
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Yes, I do that. I don't consider that "brand loyalty", though, as the instant an alternative that is better for me comes around, I'll buy it instead with no qualms.
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Could be that all the brands of old are just that now names and trademarks held by a few large brand holdings companies, they don't make their own product anymore. They're all the same product made in china with whom evers brand label the holdings companies decided to slap on it.
Likely all sourced from something like alibaba oh we will order 100,000k of these toaster ovens and slap the black and decker brand on them, We will order 100,000k of these same toaster ovens with different knobs and a different lcd
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Vizio is not an “Asian brand.” The company was founded in California.
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"Visio who were barely heard of a decade ago wouldn't be a big as they are. It is also a lot of the asian brands, "
He said "also a lot of the asian brands", so he didn't say Vizio was an asian brand.
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Yes and in the list of “asian brands” they listed Vizio.
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Still, I wonder what happened that killed brand loyalty so completely.
Greater transparency and lower transaction costs. Brand is always a substitute for some real product/service quality you want to know but is too much effort. Like if you're in a foreign country, you could go to $random place or you could go to McDonald's. And McD was a "known quantity", you get a burger that - for better or for worse - tastes exactly like at home. Been there, done that - too much weird stuff let's just get a burger and fries. Now you have like a zillion suggestions and reviews, if you care
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Others have mentioned the betrayal of long trusted brands failing or selling themselves out to random companies.
I will say also prior to the internet, there was little recourse but to place your trust in a brand. With the internet, good and bad news travels quickly. You can find multiple in depth video product reviews of a random 5 dollar item. It comes from a large populace that can be gamed, but not nearly so easily as controlled advertising back in the day. So brand loyalty becomes but a smaller fac
Are they out of touch or am I? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously? You seriously believe anyone wants to do that?
One of two things is happening:
1) Everyone-except-me spends most of their time shopping. If you're not asleep, then you're probably shopping. We all just sit around thinking about things we want to buy, and we're all frustrated that it takes so much work (ugh, the clicking! the endless clicking!!) to get them purchased. It's hell on earth, we have a problem, and we need it fixed. If only I had a convenient thing that would take voice commands for shopping! I would pay for that. I would order it. I'm ordering things right now. Anyone wanna sell me one of those? Oh well. I'll be ordering more stuff again in 15 minutes, so maybe my fantasy shopping interface will be ready then.
2) The aforementioned isn't true, but the people who run Amazon and Google think it's true.
Re:Are they out of touch or am I? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's actually really simple:
by erasing, to the greatest degree possible, every single hassle required to buy something, you greatly increase the amount of impulse purchases. You'd be amazed at how often a minor amount of effort keeps people from buying something that they only maybe-kinda-sorta might want to buy.
This is great for retailers, and terrible for customers.
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Seriously? You seriously believe anyone wants to do that?
Not only do I want to do that, the ability to re-order items from Amazon is one of the main reasons I have an Echo, mainly because I have a bad memory or because I'm thinking about other things. So when I'm in the shower for example, and notice I'm running low on shampoo, I can just yell out (from the shower) "Alexa, order more shampoo" which is a godsend for me. Before I had an Echo, I would make a mental note that I needed more shampoo and then promptly forget about it as soon as I walked out of the bathr
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Yup (Score:3)
Clearly voice shopping is the Achilles heel of Amazon. It's a market they have no part in and by the way, it is huge.
Said no one ever. Sounds more like a ship of fools, and doubly so for being captained by a company that never finishes what it starts. At least shoprunner was in the same zip code as a good idea.
Re: Jewgle built their own destruction (Score:1)
How's the weather in
Mountain View today?
Target heh (Score:2)
Target is like K-mart for me, except more expensive
Here's the situation the last time I went to Target, I walked, didnt find anything remotely close to what I was looking for, and left, endless isles of crap I would never buy, but something simple like a toy xylophone no dice
but if I wanted one of those shitty crosley radio's or a can of brasso ... shit they didnt even have a fucking can of brasso, glass polish, plastic polish granite polish, stainless steel polish but no fucking brasso!
waste of time
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well considering I was one out of 3 people shopping in that warehouse... and it wasn't like I went at a screwball time, it should have been prime time, the stores around it were packed
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resist the Amazon Hegemony (Score:2)
Beating Amazon is easy (Score:2)
Just offer the same things as Amazon at the same price with 2 day shipping and not yearly Prime membership.
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That's called "losing money". Not every company is so keen on losing money.
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So... it's unlikely that anyone will unseat Amazon.
Not voice (Score:2)
The first thing I did when I got my Echo was disable voice ordering - that is just begging and shouting for disaster.
Amazon shines in two places:
1. You can get just about anything there, without having to check a bazillion places to find something.
2. It's very easy to use.
Manage both of those features and you'll be competitive.
End days when (Score:2)
Google and Wal-Mart form an alliance.
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They already did. Wal-Mart joined this "alliance" a while back.
Google vs Amazon (Score:2)
Gee, do I want to be sent to a Siberian Gulag or a Nazi concentration camp?
In some movies, there are no good guys, or even so-so guys. There are only evil masterminds intent on genetically modifying human beings into the perfect slaves.
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Target sucks! (Score:2)