7 ms·

Google is building an anti-Amazon alliance, and Target is the latest to join

101 points by Zhenya 9y ago

tyingq 9y ago
Voice shopping doesn't work well if it offers choices of vendors for a single product. The voice interface is a bit awkward for that. Google will end up being a kingmaker in this space. I suppose they could round robin suppliers, but to do this well requires tight integration, which also pushes you to fewer suppliers.
laluser 9y ago
These alliance or partnership deals rarely work out in the long-term. Voice shopping is still very nascent. Having two companies in the shopping pipeline can only cause problems and/or miss blind spots. Being vertically integrated is a huge advantage for Amazon.
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  Amazon and Target are themselves a great example of this - Target.com used to be run by Amazon. https://www.geekwire.com/2011/target-finally-parts-ways-amazoncom-retailers-web-site-launch-starts-outage/ https://www.geekwire.com/2011/target-finally-parts-ways-amaz...
hbosch 9y ago
If I order toilet paper via my Google Home, where does it come from? Wal Mart or Target? How long for shipping? If they send me dog food instead, how do I get in touch with customer service? Is it Google's customer service or Target's? I don't see how this is a threat to Amazon. People don't shop there because they have voice -- they shop there because I can Prime myself anything in 2 days or less and if it's messed up I can talk to a human being and find out why. I'd hate to try and get the same kind of service via Google and Target.
- dawnerd 9y ago
  I order by price, so that means not ordering things like paper towels from amazon. Their grocery and household goods are often more expensive than just going down the street. Also target has amazing returns. You can return online orders to the store - not like you can do that with amazon. I believe Walmart is the same.
  - CamelCaseName 9y ago
    Starting this month, you'll be able to return some Amazon items to some Kohl's locations. [0] I suspect that will be true for Whole Foods as well at some point soon. [0] http://www.businessinsider.com/kohls-returns-amazon-how-to-2017-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/kohls-returns-amazon-how-to-2...
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- cryptoz 9y ago
  > they shop there because I can Prime myself anything in 2 days or less and if it's messed up I can talk to a human being and find out why. Really? Amazon is often very late with Prime deliveries in my experience, only hitting the 2-day mark maybe 60% of the time. And when the miss the delivery (which I am paying $100/year for!!) there are no options presented for customer service or support, just "check back here in 3 days and if your package still hasn't arrived we'll present you with more options". Meanwhile I can call Google any time and get great customer support for the products I pay for. I'd vastly prefer the Google delivery experience that I'd expect them to create compared to what Amazon Prime is now.
  - tedmiston 9y ago
    > Meanwhile I can call Google any time and get great customer support for the products I pay for. We must not use the same Google. Lack of available support is one of the most cited reasons for not buying Google hardware, especially their own Chromebooks.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
If they are fighting how will they become Googlezon ? :-) I don't think Google saves itself by being a federated shopping platform (aka the Uber for Amazon). It would do much better by continuing to attack Amazon's AWS offerings with its own, after all if Google can keep Amazon from making a profit on their infrastructure it goes back to be a cost/liability at Amazon rather than an Asset. That cuts into profits eventually.
- ISL 9y ago
  In between profit and liability is break-even. For a company with a mantra of "your margin is our opportunity", break-even is an acceptable outcome. As long as companies can make money on float, sheer volume can be its own profit center.
- r00fus 9y ago
  Were you referring to this [1]? If you s/Friendster/Facebook/ I think it seems very interesting. The information-security-state is already here, we just don't have most of the benefits (those accrue to the advertisers and TLAs). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPIC_2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPIC_2014
Top19 9y ago
Just last night I was talking with a friend about how good Amazon is compared to any other of the tech companies. They weren’t blamed for the elections, they haven’t gotten mixed up with terrorists, their “personalized” recommendations are sometimes so cutely wrong its actually pleasant to see. I mean they still probably have too much power, but more in the sense of Walmart in the 1990’s. Amazon might be a monopoly, but at least they don’t undermine democracy (yet). Google as I am typing this is undermining the electorate. That being said, my praise of Amazon is really more praise of Jeff Bezos. If he dies, or has a change of heart, we could be in trouble. Also these partnerships mean nothing. I remember at Oracle an exec telling us how many “partnerships” he announced with Apple/Samsung/whatever at SAP. They whole point of the partnership wasn’t to “collaborate”, it was to release a press release. What do people think happens in the end?? That the most brilliant engineers of each company fly to a secret location, get into a room, and then diagram (“ideate!”) a solution on a whiteboard like it’s an episode of Numbers or Law and Order: Criminal Intent??
- busyant 9y ago
  > They weren’t blamed for the elections Trump has taken some shots at Amazon (primarily b/c Bezos owns WaPo), so they have been "in the mix" w/ respect to the current political climate. > That being said, my praise of Amazon is really more praise of Jeff Bezos. If he dies, or has a change of heart, we could be in trouble. Also, if you read some other threads on HN, there is a strong sentiment that Bezos is "shaking down" North American cities to determine which one is most willing to bend to his will for a secondary headquarters It's not all rainbows and ponies in AMZN land.
  - stcredzero 9y ago
    I just got an image in my head of a GOOG vs. AMZN animated rainbows and ponies battle.
  - alpha_squared 9y ago
    > Also, if you read some other threads on HN, there is a strong sentiment that Bezos is "shaking down" North American cities to determine which one is most willing to bend to his will for a secondary headquarters There's also some sentiment in the Seattle investor/business community that Amazon is using the opportunity as a threat to the city. That it's willing to expand somewhere else if the city doesn't become more friendly towards Amazon's demands/preferences. This certainly lines up well with the idea that Amazon announced a HQ2 without actually naming a city, leaving the media buzz and PR to influence the city of Seattle. Though these are all rumblings I've heard and should be taken with a grain of salt.
sashk 9y ago
Why would I order from Target, Walmart or others and then wait unknown amount of time for delivery, when I can order anything I need on Amazon and have it in my hands in two days delivered for free, or sometimes even same day? I think Amazon spend great amount of money into delivery infrastructure and it works: I rarely shop now anywhere else, because I hate uncertainly: when I paid for something, I want it in my hands NOW. I doubt Target, Walmart or others will able to provide this. They are not ready for online shopping. Amazon is. And alliance will fail at some point in future, when all these stores will decide to deliver goods themselves to avoid middle men. So no, sorry. I don't get it!
- tyingq 9y ago
  I don't think it's there yet, but I believe the long term plan would be delivery from a Walmart/Target near you. Walmart, at least, was moving that way. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/06/01/walmart-is-asking-employees-to-deliver-packages-on-their-way-home-from-work/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/06/01/w...
- daveFNbuck 9y ago
  I feel the same way as you, and the unpredictability and unreliability of AMZL has really turned me off of Amazon lately. They're constantly lying about deliveries, saying they handed a package directly to me when they left it at another building or claiming they couldn't get through the gate when they lost the package or missed the deadline.
  - actionscripted 9y ago
    They're constantly lying about deliveries, saying they handed a package directly to me when they left it at another building or claiming they couldn't get through the gate when they lost the package or missed the deadline. How is this an Amazon problem and not a delivery service (USPS, UPS, FedEx, et al.) problem?
    - daveFNbuck 9y ago
      Because I'm talking about AMZL, which is Amazon's delivery service. I haven't had these problems with USPS, UPS, or FedEx in the 3 years I've lived at this address.
vondur 9y ago
Target has big problems with their online ordering. I've ordered items from them, had the order lost and no contact from the company at all. If you go to a local store where you can also have items delivered, they have no order info, and can't help you. There is a reason why Amazon is popular.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  My counter anecdote: I had a fantastic online ordering experience at Target about a week or two ago. I needed something during the work day, so I placed an order with the nearest store to my office over the Internet and they had my order ready for in-store pickup in under a half hour. Stopped by, walked in, picked it up, and left. Still had time to go get lunch.
rdtsc 9y ago
I talked to various developers from a few retail stores a few years ago and they said their companies are absolutely terrified of Amazon. Developers would be happy to use AWS but they are not allowed because it would be giving business to Amazon. But when there is fear, there is opportunity. So Google is using that opportunity here. Not a bad move. Walmart is on-board as well it seems. Saw news about Microsoft partnering with Amazon recently for some machine learning API. But wouldn't Microsoft compete with Amazon too? Though wonder if they are more worried about Google, "enemy of my biggest enemy is my friend" kind of thing.
sourthyme 9y ago
I think we need a good competitor in this space, and can't think of another company that could help to leverage retailers enough. To me this is like google vs apple. Only good can come out of this for the consumer.
faragon 9y ago
Good for Google. What about a Prime-like service including videos, movies, and music for 20-30 USD per year?
- daveFNbuck 9y ago
  YouTube Red is 120 USD per year for just videos and music (no movies), so what you're asking for is extremely unlikely.
  - Raidion 9y ago
    I mean, they do have movies, just really not a great selection. $30 for a year seems pretty cheap though, I agree.
Jagat 9y ago
So far I've ordered twice from Costco, and once from Walgreens, using google express. Both the times my order got 'canceled' with no reason specified. There's no "why?" link/button/reason either. When I went to Costco and talked to the folks there, they said they don't deliver via Google Express. And I've no idea what went wrong with the Walgreens order, and I don't feel like trying again either. Google needs to set higher standards for themselves and their business partners if they want to compete with Amazon.
throw2016 9y ago
Google should be called out on their pathetic support culture. Are they afraid of hiring support folks, if this is not ideology driving business decisions what is? There is no way they can compete even 1% with Amazon's customer service. Everyone knows you can automate untill you need review at which point you need people. No amount of machine learning can take away human review and misguided attempts to do so simply pretend the world is perfect and ignore reality in favour of fairy tales and ideology. Of course the customer is left paying the price for these insane assumptions.
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  This is just Shopping Express. On the times they got my order wrong, they just let me keep the wrongly sent item and sent the correct thing. That's how they automate support in this product.
- eco 9y ago
  It seems to vary a lot by product. I had awful billing support on GCP (quite some time ago now so it might be better now like the Googler who replied to me last time I talked about it on HN said it would). Project Fi support has been fantastic though.
- Chaebixi 9y ago
  > Google should be called out on their pathetic support culture. Are they afraid of hiring support folks, if this is not ideology driving business decisions what is? There is no way they can compete even 1% with Amazon's customer service. "Google...is institutionally so used to its ‘customers’ actually being its products that when it gets into businesses where it actually has customers it really has little sense of how to deal with them." http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-serf-on-googles-farm http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-serf-on-googles-farm
AndrewOMartin 9y ago
When the axe came into the Forest, the trees said "The handle is one of us".
- mxuribe 9y ago
  This one is hilarious!!
gizmodo59 9y ago
I can now talk to an "intelligent" AI when my shipment doesn't arrive on time or if I have to complain about a product I bought. May be a post in Google Forums.
scrooched_moose 9y ago
Until they solve the selection issue I just don't care what else they can offer. Amazon has won in my book by being a one stop shop for literally everything. I almost never price compare anymore because it's just so damn convenient being able to go on there, search, and have it in 2 or fewer days. I just went through my last two months of Amazon purchases and searched for them on Target: No results: 16 items Results, but inferior products I wouldn't have purchased: 3 Equivalent item but far more expensive (double or more): 3 Identical item or equivalent I still would have purchased: 11 In the end, they could have "replaced" Amazon 33% of the time for me. That's low enough I'm never going to bother. Edit: I saw Wal-Mart in the article so I did the same items with them. They were only missing 4 items for an 88% success rate and a few looked higher quality than I got. Not sure if they're any less "evil" (whatever that means here) but they fared much better than I expected.
- beagle3 9y ago
  Did you also compare prices? In the last couple of weeks I've heard from many people that Walmart is significantly cheaper on everyday things.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    And Walmart will even bring your order out to your car for you for pick up. Definitely worth it for the price savings compared to Amazon.
  - scrooched_moose 9y ago
    No. They were ballpark the same on everything (+\- 10%) but I didn't look closer than that.
mythz 9y ago
Surprised this hasn't happened sooner, IMO Google controlling the online UX/AI for products sourced from brick and mortars is the only viable e-commerce competitor to Amazon's continued dominance. I'm a happy Amazon customer so I wouldn't switch, but as it's always healthy to have competition, I'd be a customer of both. Either way handing over the user-facing UX to a major tech company doesn't bode well for the long-term future of Brick and Mortars as Google's brand will only become stronger with consumers who'd be a front for their suppliers that are ruthlessly competing in a war for the lowest price.
dfps 9y ago
Won't competition be both good for Amazon and for consumers? Right now, Amazon is a monopoly (because of Prime and good selection [although still lots of room there for improvement], and I also use Amazon Prime a lot, but a second option would probably improve things, I think.
forgotAgain 9y ago
What a difference a word can make: This post heading: Google is building an anti-Amazon alliance, and Target is the latest to join and the source article: Google is essentially building an anti-Amazon alliance, and Target is the latest to join The one word changes the article from providing an interpretation of a set of facts to a declaration of a proven fact. Since Recode has some gravitas the difference is even greater than if it was a blog mill churning out click bait.
heurist 9y ago
I know a guy who knows some Google VPs who say Google is afraid people will go directly to Amazon for all their shopping searches rather than starting with Google, hence ad spend is threatened. Big deal for Google.

101 points by Zhenya 9y ago

Voice shopping doesn't work well if it offers choices of vendors for a single product. The voice interface is a bit awkward for that. Google will end up being a kingmaker in this space. I suppose they could round robin suppliers, but to do this well requires tight integration, which also pushes you to fewer suppliers.

laluser 9y ago

These alliance or partnership deals rarely work out in the long-term. Voice shopping is still very nascent. Having two companies in the shopping pipeline can only cause problems and/or miss blind spots. Being vertically integrated is a huge advantage for Amazon.

ceejayoz 9y ago
Amazon and Target are themselves a great example of this - Target.com used to be run by Amazon. https://www.geekwire.com/2011/target-finally-parts-ways-amazoncom-retailers-web-site-launch-starts-outage/ https://www.geekwire.com/2011/target-finally-parts-ways-amaz...

hbosch 9y ago

If I order toilet paper via my Google Home, where does it come from? Wal Mart or Target? How long for shipping? If they send me dog food instead, how do I get in touch with customer service? Is it Google's customer service or Target's? I don't see how this is a threat to Amazon. People don't shop there because they have voice -- they shop there because I can Prime myself anything in 2 days or less and if it's messed up I can talk to a human being and find out why. I'd hate to try and get the same kind of service via Google and Target.

dawnerd 9y ago
I order by price, so that means not ordering things like paper towels from amazon. Their grocery and household goods are often more expensive than just going down the street. Also target has amazing returns. You can return online orders to the store - not like you can do that with amazon. I believe Walmart is the same.
- CamelCaseName 9y ago
  Starting this month, you'll be able to return some Amazon items to some Kohl's locations. [0] I suspect that will be true for Whole Foods as well at some point soon. [0] http://www.businessinsider.com/kohls-returns-amazon-how-to-2017-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/kohls-returns-amazon-how-to-2...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
cryptoz 9y ago
> they shop there because I can Prime myself anything in 2 days or less and if it's messed up I can talk to a human being and find out why. Really? Amazon is often very late with Prime deliveries in my experience, only hitting the 2-day mark maybe 60% of the time. And when the miss the delivery (which I am paying $100/year for!!) there are no options presented for customer service or support, just "check back here in 3 days and if your package still hasn't arrived we'll present you with more options". Meanwhile I can call Google any time and get great customer support for the products I pay for. I'd vastly prefer the Google delivery experience that I'd expect them to create compared to what Amazon Prime is now.
- tedmiston 9y ago
  > Meanwhile I can call Google any time and get great customer support for the products I pay for. We must not use the same Google. Lack of available support is one of the most cited reasons for not buying Google hardware, especially their own Chromebooks.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

If they are fighting how will they become Googlezon ? :-) I don't think Google saves itself by being a federated shopping platform (aka the Uber for Amazon). It would do much better by continuing to attack Amazon's AWS offerings with its own, after all if Google can keep Amazon from making a profit on their infrastructure it goes back to be a cost/liability at Amazon rather than an Asset. That cuts into profits eventually.

ISL 9y ago
In between profit and liability is break-even. For a company with a mantra of "your margin is our opportunity", break-even is an acceptable outcome. As long as companies can make money on float, sheer volume can be its own profit center.
r00fus 9y ago
Were you referring to this [1]? If you s/Friendster/Facebook/ I think it seems very interesting. The information-security-state is already here, we just don't have most of the benefits (those accrue to the advertisers and TLAs). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPIC_2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPIC_2014

Top19 9y ago

Just last night I was talking with a friend about how good Amazon is compared to any other of the tech companies. They weren’t blamed for the elections, they haven’t gotten mixed up with terrorists, their “personalized” recommendations are sometimes so cutely wrong its actually pleasant to see. I mean they still probably have too much power, but more in the sense of Walmart in the 1990’s. Amazon might be a monopoly, but at least they don’t undermine democracy (yet). Google as I am typing this is undermining the electorate. That being said, my praise of Amazon is really more praise of Jeff Bezos. If he dies, or has a change of heart, we could be in trouble. Also these partnerships mean nothing. I remember at Oracle an exec telling us how many “partnerships” he announced with Apple/Samsung/whatever at SAP. They whole point of the partnership wasn’t to “collaborate”, it was to release a press release. What do people think happens in the end?? That the most brilliant engineers of each company fly to a secret location, get into a room, and then diagram (“ideate!”) a solution on a whiteboard like it’s an episode of Numbers or Law and Order: Criminal Intent??

busyant 9y ago
> They weren’t blamed for the elections Trump has taken some shots at Amazon (primarily b/c Bezos owns WaPo), so they have been "in the mix" w/ respect to the current political climate. > That being said, my praise of Amazon is really more praise of Jeff Bezos. If he dies, or has a change of heart, we could be in trouble. Also, if you read some other threads on HN, there is a strong sentiment that Bezos is "shaking down" North American cities to determine which one is most willing to bend to his will for a secondary headquarters It's not all rainbows and ponies in AMZN land.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  I just got an image in my head of a GOOG vs. AMZN animated rainbows and ponies battle.
- alpha_squared 9y ago
  > Also, if you read some other threads on HN, there is a strong sentiment that Bezos is "shaking down" North American cities to determine which one is most willing to bend to his will for a secondary headquarters There's also some sentiment in the Seattle investor/business community that Amazon is using the opportunity as a threat to the city. That it's willing to expand somewhere else if the city doesn't become more friendly towards Amazon's demands/preferences. This certainly lines up well with the idea that Amazon announced a HQ2 without actually naming a city, leaving the media buzz and PR to influence the city of Seattle. Though these are all rumblings I've heard and should be taken with a grain of salt.

sashk 9y ago

Why would I order from Target, Walmart or others and then wait unknown amount of time for delivery, when I can order anything I need on Amazon and have it in my hands in two days delivered for free, or sometimes even same day? I think Amazon spend great amount of money into delivery infrastructure and it works: I rarely shop now anywhere else, because I hate uncertainly: when I paid for something, I want it in my hands NOW. I doubt Target, Walmart or others will able to provide this. They are not ready for online shopping. Amazon is. And alliance will fail at some point in future, when all these stores will decide to deliver goods themselves to avoid middle men. So no, sorry. I don't get it!

tyingq 9y ago
I don't think it's there yet, but I believe the long term plan would be delivery from a Walmart/Target near you. Walmart, at least, was moving that way. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/06/01/walmart-is-asking-employees-to-deliver-packages-on-their-way-home-from-work/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/06/01/w...
daveFNbuck 9y ago
I feel the same way as you, and the unpredictability and unreliability of AMZL has really turned me off of Amazon lately. They're constantly lying about deliveries, saying they handed a package directly to me when they left it at another building or claiming they couldn't get through the gate when they lost the package or missed the deadline.
- actionscripted 9y ago
  They're constantly lying about deliveries, saying they handed a package directly to me when they left it at another building or claiming they couldn't get through the gate when they lost the package or missed the deadline. How is this an Amazon problem and not a delivery service (USPS, UPS, FedEx, et al.) problem?
  - daveFNbuck 9y ago
    Because I'm talking about AMZL, which is Amazon's delivery service. I haven't had these problems with USPS, UPS, or FedEx in the 3 years I've lived at this address.

vondur 9y ago

Target has big problems with their online ordering. I've ordered items from them, had the order lost and no contact from the company at all. If you go to a local store where you can also have items delivered, they have no order info, and can't help you. There is a reason why Amazon is popular.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
My counter anecdote: I had a fantastic online ordering experience at Target about a week or two ago. I needed something during the work day, so I placed an order with the nearest store to my office over the Internet and they had my order ready for in-store pickup in under a half hour. Stopped by, walked in, picked it up, and left. Still had time to go get lunch.

rdtsc 9y ago

I talked to various developers from a few retail stores a few years ago and they said their companies are absolutely terrified of Amazon. Developers would be happy to use AWS but they are not allowed because it would be giving business to Amazon. But when there is fear, there is opportunity. So Google is using that opportunity here. Not a bad move. Walmart is on-board as well it seems. Saw news about Microsoft partnering with Amazon recently for some machine learning API. But wouldn't Microsoft compete with Amazon too? Though wonder if they are more worried about Google, "enemy of my biggest enemy is my friend" kind of thing.

sourthyme 9y ago

I think we need a good competitor in this space, and can't think of another company that could help to leverage retailers enough. To me this is like google vs apple. Only good can come out of this for the consumer.

faragon 9y ago

Good for Google. What about a Prime-like service including videos, movies, and music for 20-30 USD per year?

daveFNbuck 9y ago
YouTube Red is 120 USD per year for just videos and music (no movies), so what you're asking for is extremely unlikely.
- Raidion 9y ago
  I mean, they do have movies, just really not a great selection. $30 for a year seems pretty cheap though, I agree.

Jagat 9y ago

So far I've ordered twice from Costco, and once from Walgreens, using google express. Both the times my order got 'canceled' with no reason specified. There's no "why?" link/button/reason either. When I went to Costco and talked to the folks there, they said they don't deliver via Google Express. And I've no idea what went wrong with the Walgreens order, and I don't feel like trying again either. Google needs to set higher standards for themselves and their business partners if they want to compete with Amazon.

throw2016 9y ago

Google should be called out on their pathetic support culture. Are they afraid of hiring support folks, if this is not ideology driving business decisions what is? There is no way they can compete even 1% with Amazon's customer service. Everyone knows you can automate untill you need review at which point you need people. No amount of machine learning can take away human review and misguided attempts to do so simply pretend the world is perfect and ignore reality in favour of fairy tales and ideology. Of course the customer is left paying the price for these insane assumptions.

lern_too_spel 9y ago
This is just Shopping Express. On the times they got my order wrong, they just let me keep the wrongly sent item and sent the correct thing. That's how they automate support in this product.
eco 9y ago
It seems to vary a lot by product. I had awful billing support on GCP (quite some time ago now so it might be better now like the Googler who replied to me last time I talked about it on HN said it would). Project Fi support has been fantastic though.
Chaebixi 9y ago
> Google should be called out on their pathetic support culture. Are they afraid of hiring support folks, if this is not ideology driving business decisions what is? There is no way they can compete even 1% with Amazon's customer service. "Google...is institutionally so used to its ‘customers’ actually being its products that when it gets into businesses where it actually has customers it really has little sense of how to deal with them." http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-serf-on-googles-farm http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-serf-on-googles-farm

AndrewOMartin 9y ago

When the axe came into the Forest, the trees said "The handle is one of us".

mxuribe 9y ago
This one is hilarious!!

gizmodo59 9y ago

I can now talk to an "intelligent" AI when my shipment doesn't arrive on time or if I have to complain about a product I bought. May be a post in Google Forums.

scrooched_moose 9y ago

Until they solve the selection issue I just don't care what else they can offer. Amazon has won in my book by being a one stop shop for literally everything. I almost never price compare anymore because it's just so damn convenient being able to go on there, search, and have it in 2 or fewer days. I just went through my last two months of Amazon purchases and searched for them on Target: No results: 16 items Results, but inferior products I wouldn't have purchased: 3 Equivalent item but far more expensive (double or more): 3 Identical item or equivalent I still would have purchased: 11 In the end, they could have "replaced" Amazon 33% of the time for me. That's low enough I'm never going to bother. Edit: I saw Wal-Mart in the article so I did the same items with them. They were only missing 4 items for an 88% success rate and a few looked higher quality than I got. Not sure if they're any less "evil" (whatever that means here) but they fared much better than I expected.

beagle3 9y ago
Did you also compare prices? In the last couple of weeks I've heard from many people that Walmart is significantly cheaper on everyday things.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  And Walmart will even bring your order out to your car for you for pick up. Definitely worth it for the price savings compared to Amazon.
- scrooched_moose 9y ago
  No. They were ballpark the same on everything (+\- 10%) but I didn't look closer than that.

mythz 9y ago

Surprised this hasn't happened sooner, IMO Google controlling the online UX/AI for products sourced from brick and mortars is the only viable e-commerce competitor to Amazon's continued dominance. I'm a happy Amazon customer so I wouldn't switch, but as it's always healthy to have competition, I'd be a customer of both. Either way handing over the user-facing UX to a major tech company doesn't bode well for the long-term future of Brick and Mortars as Google's brand will only become stronger with consumers who'd be a front for their suppliers that are ruthlessly competing in a war for the lowest price.

dfps 9y ago

Won't competition be both good for Amazon and for consumers? Right now, Amazon is a monopoly (because of Prime and good selection [although still lots of room there for improvement], and I also use Amazon Prime a lot, but a second option would probably improve things, I think.

forgotAgain 9y ago

What a difference a word can make: This post heading: Google is building an anti-Amazon alliance, and Target is the latest to join and the source article: Google is essentially building an anti-Amazon alliance, and Target is the latest to join The one word changes the article from providing an interpretation of a set of facts to a declaration of a proven fact. Since Recode has some gravitas the difference is even greater than if it was a blog mill churning out click bait.

heurist 9y ago

I know a guy who knows some Google VPs who say Google is afraid people will go directly to Amazon for all their shopping searches rather than starting with Google, hence ad spend is threatened. Big deal for Google.