Google expands delivery service
In a bid to take a bigger bite out of Amazon’s business, this week Google is expanding its same-day delivery service.
If you didn’t know Google was in the delivery business, here’s the gist: In a handful of cities — now including Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. — you can buy stuff from brick and mortar stores and receive it the same day.
The service formerly known as Google Shopping Express, and formerly free, it will now be called simply Google Express. Members can pay $10 a month for unlimited same-day and overnight delivery on items costing more than $15.
Google used to be the go-to place for product research, says Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru.
“Amazon is now the primary place where consumers go when they are looking to research almost any product,” she says. “Google wants its crown back.”
In a speech in Berlin yesterday, Google chairman Eric Schmidt acknowledged as much.
“Many people think our main competition is Bing or Yahoo,” he said. “But, really, our biggest search competitor is Amazon.”
Delivery is an expensive and labor-intensive business, though, says analyst Colin Gillis with BGC Financial. Another same-day delivery service, offered by eBay, has struggled to get off the ground.
“Either you hire an army of people to get these packages and to deliver them to your customers, or you outsource it to a carrier or logistics company,” Gillis says.
Then again, Forrester’s Mulpuru says Google is such a profitable company, it can afford to experiment.
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