
Buy on Google is now open and commission-free - hhua_
https://blog.google/products/shopping/buy-on-google-is-zero-commission/
======
jeffbee
This doesn't seem to solve the main problem I have with Amazon: even when I
know exactly what I want, it's impossible to find. Amazon hides the thing you
want behind the items they want you to buy instead, and they allow fakes and
spammers to flourish. They never have the right aspects in their search
filters, either. Looks like Google is the same way. I can't find an A19 LED
light bulb with 2700K color temperature and CRI 90 or better. I'm going to
have a much better experience in an actual store.

~~~
mikelward
If I search for Pixel 3 case on Amazon, it will also return Pixel 3 XL cases.

If I search for 1440p IPS monitor, it will mix in some monitors that aren't
1440p, and some that aren't IPS.

I'm not sure if it's because they don't want to solve the problem, because
they don't care, or because somehow having customers need to spend more time
on Amazon to research their purchases perversely leads to people spending more
time on Amazon seeing other items they might also later buy.

~~~
greggman3
Another possibility is search is hard. If all they returned is things with
"Pixel 3" well, that includes "Pixel 3 XL". Ok so they look for exact string
"Pixel 3". Now nothing matches like "Red Pixel 3 Case"

note, I have never implemented search but suspect it's hard problem.

Still Amazon's search is pretty awful. I've found adding something in the
category I want to my cart gets me better results than being on the item
itself. In other words I might search for "wrench" and it shows me 50 items of
which 2 are remotely close the the type of wrench I'm looking for. I click
one, get new page for that product and below it shows other wrenches but they
aren't remotely like the one the page is for. So I add it to my cart and
suddenly it suggests a bunch of stuff that is actually close to what I wanted.

I also don't understand the pitching me things I already bought. I get
pitching me disposables I already bought. I don't get pitching me a monitor or
soldering iron or another mouse or keyboard. I'd think either via statistical
analysis or via manual tagging they could figure out what items are more
likely to be purchased again and not recommend another PS4 just after I bought
a PS4? But who knows. It could be this is harder than it sounds or it could
also be they suck at search or haven't gotten around to it yet or ...

~~~
coronadisaster
Pretty sure that Amazon search is bad on purpose... For a while they didnt
even allow you to sort search results unless you selected a category (some
products can be in multiple or wrong categories so you ended up hiding good
results if you selected a category).

------
skybrian
I used to like buying with Google Checkout back in the day. And does anyone
remember Froogle? They used to have free product listings, and then they
started charging. One of the reasons I heard for that change was that they
were getting a lot of spam.

I guess by partnering with Shopify they can let someone else worry about that,
but likely they'll have a counterfeit problem if this gets any traction.

~~~
tantalor
"It’s now free to sell on Google"

[https://blog.google/products/shopping/its-now-free-to-
sell-o...](https://blog.google/products/shopping/its-now-free-to-sell-on-
google/)

~~~
skybrian
This tells us that Google isn't charging, but not what else you need to set up
and how much they charge. That part seems pretty opaque.

~~~
cosmie
"We're not saying you _have_ to pay us $50/month, but what will potential
customers think if your business isn't Google Guaranteed while all your
competitors are..."

[https://searchengineland.com/google-offering-upgraded-gmb-
pr...](https://searchengineland.com/google-offering-upgraded-gmb-profile-with-
google-guaranteed-badge-for-50-per-month-338064)

~~~
three_seagrass
That's not an arbitrary service. You're paying to have Google review and
dispute claims for business through local services.

~~~
cosmie
Absolutely! I didn't intend to give the impression they weren't providing a
service for that fee, but meant it in relation to skybrian's comment about _"
what else you need to set up and how much they charge"_.

The type of service offered by the $50/month GMB fee is designed to engender
consumer confidence. As that Google Guaranteed status starts to propagate,
companies showing up without it will start to be at a distinct disadvantage
from the ones that do show it in their listings.

Scaling up the enhanced/paid GMB profiles at the same time as announcing the
open and commission-free product listings is likely not a coincidence. The
product listing change will result an accelerating need to adopt that paid GMB
service as a baseline requirement in order to remain competitive.

------
bhamta
This is 'The Anti-Amazon Alliance' as Ben Thompson puts it. Curious to see if
customers will adopt it. I think it lacks two key value props of Amazon:
uniform guarantees (Amazon guarantees regardless of seller) and super fast
shipping.

~~~
amelius
My guess is that Amazon will start banning vendors that also sell on Google.

~~~
aljg
This would almost certainly be illegal (antitrust violation) and probably
wouldn't be worth the firestorm even if it was legal.

~~~
gowld
OK they'll raise seller prices and offer discounts for exclusivity.

~~~
amelius
Exactly. Or just lower vendor search rankings.

------
reilly3000
Has anybody seen the UX? It’s very deceptive. I went to a local business
listing and tapped on Menu, expecting to see a deep link to their site.
Instead it shows a Buy On Google page with hosted menu. It was hard to leave
that page; my browser history could only start over the search since it was an
SPA of a local listing.

Buy on Google is the new AMP, except now it’s taking over the rest of
commerce, not just web publishing.

------
flavor8
They need to solve shipping. Partner with Uber (or hey, Waymo) to pick up and
drop off packages from shops to consumers.

An alternate model would be to make search good enough let consumers find
stores within a radius of their current location selling X, and price compare
them. E.g. I need a widget - stores a, b and c are selling it. Store a is
$14.99 and 5 miles away, store b is $8.99 and 15 miles away, store c is $11.99
and 20 miles away.

~~~
mrweasel
"Solve shipping"... Shipping packages is a solved problem in many countries.
You order something, before the shipping company picks up the orders for today
at the sell, anywhere from 17:00 to 22:00. It shows up at your door the next
day or a pickup point of your choosing.

~~~
flavor8
To truly compete with Amazon, they need convenience. Buying packages from
mom&pop retailers to ship can yield anywhere from 1 day to 3 week delivery
times. Aside from a strong anti-Amazon conviction, where's the motivation for
consumers to do that?

To achieve convenience requires either building out a logistics infrastructure
on the scale of Amazon, which is clearly a business Google doesn't want to be
in, or to approach the problem from the opposite direction. Brick and mortar
retail is declining, especially post-pandemic (but also pre); that said, there
is _already_ an infrastructure that exists transfers goods to retail locations
- it's just spread over 10,000 companies rather than 1. However, if you can
write software to better utilize that infrastructure so that you allow
consumers to find items that are already physically close to them, and ship
using either "last mile" crowdsourcing (and eventually auto-driving vehicles),
or at least direct consumers to where the items are so that they can travel
less than 30 minutes and get _the_ item they want, then you can come up with a
credible anti-Amazon alliance.

Example: I want to buy a sun shade for a pergola. There are probably 10 stores
within 20 miles of me that carry them, but I have no idea ahead of time the
brands, the price, the color, the size, etc. I could spend an hour calling the
stores, and have irritated minimum wage cashiers do inventory searches for me
an attempt to answer my questions. Alternately I can go on Amazon, make a
purchase, and have it shipped in 2 days from a warehouse 900 miles away from
me.

~~~
mrweasel
The US, and other large countries, may be the special case in this situation.

Having something shipped from Amazon, and other non-local webshops means
waiting for a few days, or weeks. While ordering from any online store (even
the mom and pop retailers) within the country will almost always be next day
delivery, and you get to pick between at least two shipping companies.

For selection and availability, pick any local price comparison site, and just
order from which ever is cheapest and have the item in stock.

------
breakfastduck
Sounds noble but if google are at the helm then that's the opposite of what I
want.

I'm not Amazons biggest fan but Google are the last people on earth I'd want
to have my purchase history.

Yeah they look all corporate good with their no commission / seller first
attitude but it's just another data harvesting excersize & I'd rather not buy
at all than buy through Google for 'free'.

~~~
surbas
If you use google for email they already have your order history...

~~~
esrauch
I noticed Amazon has stopped informing you what you actually purchased in
their confirmation emails (though the emails still have other purchase
suggestions in them). I'm guessing that might be partially to prevent the info
from being conveyed to Google in Gmail.

~~~
three_seagrass
I can almost guarantee it's to get you to click back into the store for re-
engagement.

~~~
Corrado
I think it can be for both giving less data to Google and to get you to re-
engage at Amazon.

~~~
three_seagrass
Nope. Google hasn't been mining gmail emails since 2017.

------
sleepyshift
Is Google's head of payment systems really called "Bill Ready"?

~~~
crawsome
Nintendo's CEO's last name is Bowser.

Our AG is named "Barr" (Pun on a Bar association)

Is there a cool collection of these somewhere? These are the only evidence I
feel that we're in a simulation and the engineer is fucking with us.

~~~
nomadluap
I believe there was a man named Armond Hammer who was the CEO of the company
that owns Arm&Hammer (the baking soda company) at one point.

~~~
glenstein
I notice that in my home state, the head of more than one auto dealership had
the same last name as the brand of car sold by the dealership, for reasons
that were coincidences.

I wonder if there is some kind of unconscious social bias at work in these
cases?

~~~
esrauch
If your name matches a brand of a car it might be rational to sell that brand;
assuming it's otherwise a completely arbitrary choice, it probably helps name
recognition and memory, since some customers will probably mention it as a
mildly interesting anecdote to their friends and family.

------
robryan
Selling on Google has gone through a lot of iterations for them now as nothing
seems to end up working out how they want. They are unsure whether they should
just advertise products, or if they are selling whether they should handle
shipping, customer support, returns, seller reputation/reviews, payment
processing and making money from fees or just as a play to keep people on
Google and away from Amazon. At various times they have scaled up with real
employees to try and drive the service and work with merchants, at others they
have stuffed the whole process behind contact forms and Indian first level
support.

I would assume that the current results indicate that their commissions are
either loss making after all the value add services they are providing like
customer service/ returns, or the amount they bring in is so small that it
isn't worth having them there as a roadblock to adoption.

------
prepend
Could they just bring back froogle already?

If it’s free to list, why not just make a special shopping filter on google to
find stuff for sale. Amazon included.

I miss the day when I could google for products and find the best price
quality. Amazon search shows more ads than search results and the world really
needs a shopping google.

------
mark_l_watson
The author Douglas Rushkoff ("Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus," etc.) has a
lot of good things to say about the long term dangers of relying on huge
retailers like Amazon (and now apparently Google).

I am making an effort to find much smaller online retailers. About 4 months
ago I started using VitaCost for some food items, an to be honest their
service initially was not great (possibly they were overwhelmed at the
beginning of covid-19 lock-down). However, they just kept getting better and
better and now I use my shopping history to reorder very quickly. Reading
their privacy policy, they do share your purchase history with marketing
partners and I can only hope this is on a smaller scale than having Google
having my purchase history.

A counter example: my wife and I needed a new coffee pot and I knew the brand
I wanted. I went to that company's web site, tried to order, but was referred
to Amazon and Walmart Online. Oh well.

------
H8crilA
War of attrition with Amazon. This could be fun, if only Amazon wasn't the
ultimate champion of competition destruction.

------
ISL
So many questions... the big one: How does Google make money from this?

~~~
millstone
It's 100% about slowing down Amazon. They want people to search on Google
instead of Amazon.

~~~
gukov
More specifically they want people to search on Google and stay there. Pretty
much everyone starts their search on Google.

~~~
treis
Lots of people will start with Amazon when shopping. It's definitely a threat
to Google because those are some of the most valuable searches.

~~~
jiggunjer
You mean a lot of Americans will start with Amazon.

------
Andrew_nenakhov
_timeo Danaos et dona ferentes_ [1]

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeo_Danaos_et_dona_ferentes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeo_Danaos_et_dona_ferentes)

------
iammru
I doubt this will make a dent to Amazon's monopoly. Amazon is not winning
because of they're closed and have high commission. If somebody can compete
with Amazon will be companies like JD, coupang, Walmart.

~~~
rdtwo
Walmart’s search makes amazon look good.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
Anyone remember when ATMs were free?

~~~
nelaboras
EU bank cards will mostly allow free withdrawals across Europe (with some
strange exceptions). Some countries like Belgium have fully prohibited
national banks from charging customers of rival banks. It's not a
technical/financial issue, it's a policy choice...

[https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-
pr...](https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-products-and-
services/payments-transfers-cheques/faq/index_en.htm)

~~~
jiggunjer
They still charge you for the privilege of using a card though.

~~~
usr1106
I have 3 cards that don't cost me a Euro cent. 1 is debit, 1 is de facto debit
because the credit limit is nominal so I cannot spend money that I don't have
in my account. The 3rd one requires me to pay the bill 2 weeks after its
issued to avoid (high) interest. But they are all free if used correctly.

------
rawoke083600
What i need a price_parity for amazon and my local country south africa. I
agree.its mostly import duties by my misguided government.(we dont make cpus,
why tax them ?). Im thinking the next n big thing in online shopping is
getting the global-village-catalogue at my doorstep with a reasonable shipping
price, ppl in America dont know how lucky you are to have free shipping. We
can pay 2x the price in dollars just for shipping.

------
TheMagicHorsey
Well, this is a good shot across the bows for Amazon. I feel Amazon was
getting a bit abusive towards its sellers.

To those who fear Google will become abusive in the long term: yes they might,
but then there will be other competitors (perhaps a reformed Amazon) to hold
them to a fair cut in the future.

Market working as intended in other words.

------
avilay
Does anybody else think this is in response to Apple's privacy crackdown on
third party tracking data? If you buy on Buy, then you are still first party
for Google and they can still get your signals.

------
martinesko36
Sorry if this is a silly question, but is this in any way replacing Stripe?

~~~
vdfs
No, Stripe is not a direct competitor here. Also, Shopify Payment is built on
top of Stripe

------
arpinum
Google's e-commerce had been floundering for years, I'm glad they brought in
fresh leadership and upped investment to keep Amazon from having a near-
monopoly. Customers will benefit.

------
tonymet
This is what happens when you kill third party cookies. The signals have
tremendous value, so networks will move them into first party activities .
Expect further consolidation

------
jiofih
> These changes are about creating a monopoly and profiting from it later

------
ProAm
I would not trust a sellers business on Google with their history of customer
support. Why risk your lively hood?

------
Mave83
Not going to happen. The company with one of the worst customer support vs the
most customer centric. Maybe some dont care, but I know a lot that prefer
Amazon over any other Shop because of the service.

------
asdfk-12
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 204 times, shame on me.

[https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

~~~
mav3rick
"companies don't try new things" \- HN

"Google kills products" \- HN

99% of the people here would gladly work at Google. But what's the next best
thing .. downplay the company you couldn't get into :) Carry on !

~~~
StreamBright
I was trying to get into Google 3 times in my life. Results so far:

\- some (all? one?) interview failure (no feedback), rejection

\- interviews passed, no degree in CS (which was known to them prior of the
interviews), rejection

\- interviews passed, this time missing CS degree is not a problem, no
cultural fit, rejection

I think I am done. You are assumption is without merit though.

~~~
mav3rick
There are many many people without CS degrees at Google.

~~~
StreamBright
[https://www.axios.com/google-apple-college-degree-
hiring-a29...](https://www.axios.com/google-apple-college-degree-
hiring-a290bca8-65a7-4de2-8fa9-d93b4c30457a.html)

------
stevespang
Commission free until Google get's traction and then all kinds of bullshit
rules and games, and ZERO customer support . . . would you really trust the
same people who just arbitrarily cut off peoples gmail accounts and such, and
you have ZERO ability to contact them and sort it out ?

then, imagine them taking it to the next level holding on to your money and
not responding . . .

I can certainly sympathesize with that YouTube lady last year who went to
YouTube headquarters and starting slinging lead . . . bastards.

------
BiteCode_dev
Free until they dominate the entire market

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
You really think Google -- who has floundered in this space for years -- is
going to dominate a market that is already dominated by a company (Amazon)
with a 50% larger market cap?

Walmart and Target have been trying to chip away at Amazon's lead, and they're
only getting buried deeper in the dust. Google doesn't exactly have a
reputation for entering new markets and dominating them, either...

~~~
BiteCode_dev
People don't search things on amazon, they search things on google, which link
to amazon.

So yes, they have a huge potential.

They always have sucked doing things IRL, so it's not a certain win. But
owning the road to the competition shop is powerful.

Not to mention they can force the hand of small shops: use our API or go down
in ranking.

~~~
8organicbits
Is that still true? For most products Amazon search seems much improved to me,
it used to be quite poor. Plus on mobile people may be biased to search via
the app.

~~~
BiteCode_dev
Most people don't even know what an URL is. They can't tell the difference
between an app and a website. They think google is the internet. Hell, even
the ones that do know better type the site URL into google to go to the site
they want.

------
joyj2nd
Did somebody shoot Amazon a second asshole?

------
noncoml
It's not 2000's anymore. Nobody falls for the "free" as in free while we
increase our user base anymore.

~~~
bbarnett
Well... "free" has been used like this for thousands of years.
Traders/merchants spouting free this or that, like a car dealer giving free
oil changes, or midas with a free inspection.

Nothing is free. Ever.

What's changed is you personally know this now. Many still fall for this, and
there are always more humans to be scammed.

Bear in mind, most of humanity can't read. Are not really literate. The UN's
definition of literacy, is reading at a grade 6 level.

Not how you read in 6th grade, but whatever lets a 6th grader, make it to 7th
grade.

Can someone read a stop sign, do not enter sign? That's pretty much
'literate'.

While street smarts exist, bear in mind how many 'stupids' exist...

So yup.. lots of fresh pigeons.

