Expect to see more 'buy' buttons in your Google searches in the near future, as the search company is teaming up with major retailers to better compete with Amazon.
According to Reuters, Google is teaming up with Target, Walmart, Home Depot, Costco and Ultra. In this partnership, Google plans to catalog each retailer’s online wares and display alongside any searches for a particular product.
While the company already produces links to established retailers and has had a section dedicated to shopping for quite some time, this seems to be a more direct purchasing experience.
Late last year, around Black Friday, we saw the search company introduced a new Google Express landing page and product listings complete with dedicated purchase buttons and a checkout experience all without having to leave the search engine for another website.
Google is also likely assembling the supergroup of retailers to better compete with Amazon Alexa. As it stands, you can’t ask Google Assistant to buy a giant pack of toilet paper or a Google Pixel 2 as you can with Alexa, and that’s a giant pool of users the search company is likely tired of missing out on.
Furthermore, the report suggest Google only began looking into the project after seeing that tens of millions of its users were searching for images of products or entering queries of where they could purchase it.
Via Engadget
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Kevin Lee was a former computing reporter at TechRadar. Kevin is now the SEO Updates Editor at IGN based in New York. He handles all of the best of tech buying guides while also dipping his hand in the entertainment and games evergreen content. Kevin has over eight years of experience in the tech and games publications with previous bylines at Polygon, PC World, and more. Outside of work, Kevin is major movie buff of cult and bad films. He also regularly plays flight & space sim and racing games. IRL he's a fan of archery, axe throwing, and board games.