

Google is Creating an Amazon Prime Competitor - Antelope
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204012004577072323400561792-lMyQjAxMTAxMDAwMTEwNDEyWj.html

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zach
With these companies constantly getting into each others' business, I'm
reminded of the old joke:

Heaven is where the police are British, the lovers French, the mechanics
German, the chefs Italian, and it is all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is where the chefs are British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss,
the police German, and it is all organized by the Italians.

In just the last three years, Google has gotten into mobile devices, social
networking and now allegedly e-commerce, Amazon now does full-on computing
devices (with Google's OS) and Microsoft has the #2 search engine. This is
getting hard to keep track of. And no wonder everyone keeps expecting Facebook
to come out with a phone.

This report seems like the oddest one yet. Does a shipping service even
qualify as organizing the world's information and making it universally
accessible and useful?

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ticks
One thing that Amazon does is shove a load of adverts, i.e. leaflets, into
their parcels. Given that Google is also a behemoth in the ad industry, this
might just make sense.

~~~
pclstyle
My family has never had ANY leaflets in our parcels, and we've been ordering
off amazon for years now.

~~~
ScottWhigham
I've been a Prime member for 3-5 years, I guess, and we've gotten dozens and
dozens of them through the years. I can say that I cannot actually remember
the last time I received one. I can, however, remember that it was a "Cell
phones for servicemen" or something like that.

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jonmc12
I've noticed in the past that Google has special provisions for: Navigation,
Autonomous Vehicle Control, or Enterprise Applications in the terms of use -
<http://code.google.com/apis/maps/terms.html> \- 10.2c.

Google has all the data to know the exact steps between the location of the
product in inventory and the location of the doorstep of the customer. I could
see them reducing cost of delivery in the following ways:

1\. Using automated routing tools to allocate delivery resources in real-time.
Currently, a human dispatcher can account for up to 35% of the cost of a same-
day local delivery. Straight from an algorithm to a mobile phone is cheaper.

2\. Using delivery contractors to collect video data to help build in the
direction of an even richer google maps street view.

3\. Eventually using autonomous vehicles to replace the human driver. I'm not
saying this will happen any time soon, but I could see certain sections of
city roads being approved for autonomous vehicle use in the next 3-5 years.
Especially if google is pushing it while demonstrating safety. Paying a human
driver can account for up to 60% of the cost of a same-day local delivery.

Also, there are some intangible aspects of having the relationship with a
customer at their doorstep. Creates some advertising opportunities and gives
nice contextual data about the customer.

Anyhow, being fairly familiar with the space I think Amazon and Google moving
in this direction will really evolve online retail. More shipping options on
products; more goods being shipped locally (for cheaper); more control over
the delivery chain; visibility of exactly where your package is on the way to
your house. That is the kind of innovation we can expect to see if google
finds a way to leverage its data towards lower delivery cost.

~~~
waterlesscloud
How would that autonomous delivery vehicle make it up the stairs to my
apartment?

~~~
skore
I would think that some incentive (say a cut in 20% of the delivery cost)
might convince you to get /down/ the stairs from your apartment.

~~~
waterlesscloud
If I were there, perhaps.

~~~
skore
If we are talking true autonomous delivery then I guess scheduling it when
you're around should be the least of our concerns.

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yequalsx
Until Google demonstrates that they understand how to handle customer service
I will never use this service. Google is horrible when it comes to dealing
with customers.

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ippisl
From what i understand ,in this effort , google only plans to be a search
engine for companies who offer one-day shipping e-commerce.

I wonder if this is just google saying "get of my lawn" to amazon with regards
to android.

~~~
cowkingdeluxe
If all Google is offering is a filtered Google Shopping, then I doubt many
people will use it.

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Splines
If there's one thing Amazon could use improvement on, is it's search results.
Specifically, sorting them.

Seriously, I just tried it now. My complaints:

\- Why do I have to pick a department to sort? (I can kind of understand this,
but it's annoying)

\- Why isn't shipping taken into account when I sort?

\- Why are used and new prices mixed when sorting?

While I understand that Amazon can't read my mind, there are certain product
categories (cell phone cases, for example) where it's like panning for gold.
You need to spend a non-trivial amount of time digging for a quality case for
a good price.

I don't have a solution, but it certainly feels harder than it needs to be.
Searching on newegg.com feels so much better, but I suppose they have the
advantage of having a very narrow focus.

~~~
FaceKicker
Also, sorting by reviews is broken (in the sense of being useful). A product
with a single rating of 5 stars should not be ranked above a product with 1000
five-star ratings and 1 four-star rating. It's a really easy problem to solve
too...

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r00fus
The silly thing is that IMDB figured out ranking in 1997 by using a beysian
posterior mean:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Movie_Database#Ranking...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Movie_Database#Ranking_.28IMDb_Top_250.29)

(guess who has owned IMDB for over 10 years?)

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crcsmnky
For awhile there was this general sense that Google was doing a little bit of
everything and getting involved in everyone else's business (the root of the
"what if Google decided to enter this market" question).

However, lately they've been making the news for the products they're no
longer focusing on (Wave, other Labs, etc.). Could it be that with things like
the UI refresh, Google+ and a shipping service (and a host of other
initiatives), they're attempting to connect more with people and put out a
"human touch"?

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fufulabs
Google is dipping its hand at EVERYTHING I wouldn't be surprised if it would
go and compete with a custom cupcake business soon (taste graph + location +
social "share my cupcake" potential)

~~~
thaumaturgy
A client gave me an earful just yesterday because I recommended using Google
Chrome instead of Internet Explorer; she felt like Google was "too big" and
didn't trust them anymore. I tried explaining that Chrome was a safe product
anyway, but she wasn't having it.

I don't think this is a widespread problem, but it might not be too far away.

~~~
r00fus
Firefox is the safe alternative here. For years, I've setup users with
Firefox, and IETab for those specific (now mostly intranet like Outlook web
mail) sites that play better with IE.

Some folks grok Chrome, and that's good... but it's for more savvy/advanced
users.

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yalogin
This has to be a part of the Google Check out, which means the vendor
integrating the API must opt to honor it (assuming they do not make it
mandatory). I don't understand why vendor's would want to participate in it
though. It does not give them any competitive advantage over their competitors
since this is available to everyone else. So unlike amazon where they have a
lock-in advantage with Prime, Google is not really offering it to its
customers.

