I was on the Checkout site and started thinking about how it might develop as a shopping portal. Of course, Froogle is Google’s shopping site, which is in seventh or eighth position depending on whom you consult. (As an aside, Froogle probably needs to become “Google Shopping” to really take off.) But the site has a directory of stores and discount/coupon codes.
In some ways, this simple directory of links is the way that Google News began after 9/11.
I doubt that anyone at Google is currently focused on developing the Checkout site into a shopping portal, but if I were advising Google I would encourage them to: 1) rename Froogle (not my original idea), 2) think about merging Checkout and its discount offerings into Froogle and 3) integrate Google Catalog into Froogle.
We should probably expect a mobile Checkout offering before the year is out (total speculation on my part).
August 22, 2006 at 3:50 pm |
[...] Here’s my earlier post about how Checkout could/should become a shopping destination (part of a hypothetical, re-branded “Google Shopping”). [...]
September 26, 2006 at 2:30 pm |
[...] I’ve written previously about what I think that Google can/should do with shopping. The question is not whether Google will have “product search” or shopping but what will it look like precisely and what features it will offer. [...]