Google For Dummies

Google’s Approach to Online Shopping

The main difference between Google’s shopping services and those in other major portals is that Google doesn’t get its hands on the money. You don’t buy anything through Google. Both Froogle and Google Catalogs function purely as directories to products, sending you elsewhere to get your hands on the goods. Google has no revenue-sharing association with e-commerce retailers (in Froogle) or mail-order companies (in Google Catalogs). The search results you get in both services are pure; preferred placement in the search results lists is not for sale by Google.

The inevitable comparison is between Froogle and Yahoo! Shopping. (Google Catalogs is unique and can’t be compared to anything else online.) Yahoo! Shopping is a virtual mall whose directory and search results list Yahoo!’s stores. Banners for featured stores hog a portion of the front page. All this is useful, and Yahoo! houses many of the most important online retailers in the business. Yahoo!’s search engine shows off some smarts, breaking down many searches into brand listings. It also has a nice price-comparison engine.

Keeping all the stores under one virtual roof has other advantages, first among them being a shared shopping cart and payment wallet. You can load up products from multiple stores, and then pay for them all at once. You provide your credit card and shipping information just once; the information is then stored on Yahoo!’s computer. AOL and MSN have similar programs. Systems like this are purchase-oriented, whereas Google is search-oriented.

Google is not (currently) interested in handling purchase transactions, taking payment information, or hosting stores. There is no Google Wallet. The Google shopping portal is a search engine that separates products from stores to deliver targeted search lists. Furthermore, it uses similar evaluations as in its Web searches to determine which products matching your keywords are most important and should be listed first. The results aren’t quite as startling as with a Web search, which often seems to know what you want before you do.

When it comes to buying through Google, through is the right word (as opposed to from). Froogle search results are like Web search results, insofar as they link you to target sites, in this case e-commerce sites with their own shopping carts and payment systems. Google Catalogs provides mail-order phone numbers and — where possible — links to Web sites.