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This makes using it an inconvenience so I never use it

Yep, was http://froogle.com/ Many years ago Google dumped shopping, yet the site remains.

Don't be silly, Google *loves* URLs. Well, at least certain ones. http://www.google.com/ is awesome, as are http://www.blogger.com/ http://www.gmail.com/ http://www.youtube.com/ and http://www.froogle.com/ just to name a few!

anyone here no where i can find a good priced lcd? 15-17"

Thanks.

Have you tried Froogle*?

*Hey, it's on topic!

There's just too many product types out there to expect any site to track the feedback of, well, the entire market of stuff that's out there. For stuff I've looked for recently, garden equipment and robotic vacuums (ends up there's a bit more than just Roomba out there), I've found specialist forums and even commercial ads to be useful in tracking down details to search further on.

As far as generalist sites - I've found the eclectic community over at Slickdeals.net to be fairly useful in getting a quick grip on what to look for - but forum-goers there are intentionally against bad-mouthing products (thread-crapping), so you have to take a large variety of recommendations there with much due skepticism. Great place for leads though.

Then, of course, there's the Resellerratings-style sites. Once you've scoped product details, it's quite important to get feedback on who you're buying from. Again - due skepticism in all regards will help you in various ways, but large negatives or fake praise for rarely-rated stores can be an important part of an investigation for a large purchase.

If it's not a big purchase though, I'm usually comfortable just hitting Froogle, Amazon, or NewEgg and being done with it.

Ryan Fenton

Much better to have a bunch of bought-and-paid-for messages screaming at us to tell us what we need and what we should want and how we should spend our money.

I certainly don't need to be told what's good for me or how I should make economic decisions, and knowing that I may have been shopping around for a good Bluetooth device (or whatever) does absolutely nothing to change this basic fact.

A much better model for advertising would be, let's say, the yellow pages. You know what you you are looking for and you search a directory to see who is offering it and for how much.

Secondly, as Mr. Krakow points out, it's a Beta. Do we all know the concept of that word?

I take it that you don't work for google? As far as all the linked services go, I don't ever seem to have your typical "beta problems" like crashing every 10 minutes. My point? Beta depends on who you talk to and the "concept" no longer means what it used to mean. Especially as google extends its grasp on the world.

How much software of today is "beta"? Why spend developer time debugging when you can make your clients do it for you.

Karl Cocknozzle writes: ...common lack of knowledge of what a 'beta' release really is: Not ready for prime-time.

I take it Karl doesn't work for google?

Personally I'm working on my algorithm for recognising pages selling stuff and only returning them WHEN I'M LOOKING TO BUY STUFF. It would do more for Google than this algorithm and personally I could do with a few million.

That would be pretty cool.

I'd love to see Google (or someone) provide free and simple to install search tools for business inventories, libraries and even garage sales.

They already have.

There are a number of things that are particularly prone to fraud on eBay. The most common are laptops and cameras, followed closely by cellphones and cellphone accessories. Unfortunately, the particular genre I have chosen (musical instruments) is also full of fraud (and borderline ripoffs). No way I would buy a laptop on eBay, if for no other reason than most commodity items are not really suitable for the eBay auction format anyway.

BTW, there is already an eBay-killer lurking in the wings. It's Froogle. Froogle hasn't really hit it's stride yet, but the Froogle business model has some significant advantages over eBay -- and is inherently superior for about 90% of the stuff you find on eBay now. The eBay auction format is well-suited for one-of-a-kind items with high personal value-add, and little else.

In addition, eBay doesn't scale worth a damn. In order to get twice the sales, you have to work at least twice as hard (assuming you are actually an honest seller). I have recently scaled my auctions way back (from 90+ active auctions to fewer than 20), and watched my sell-through percentage more than triple, and my workload cut by 90%. For a net reduction in eBay-linked profit of about 40%. I consider that a pretty clear indicator that I really need to change my approach to de-emphasize eBay.

eBay *does* have other competition besides Froogle. One of my favorites is Blujay, which is mainly a fixed-price aggregator listing/classifieds service. Blujay.com has grown large enough to show up on the watchlist at PowerSellersUnite.com (a forum of mostly disgruntled ebay sellers). Blujay.com also leverages listings with Froogle, which has definitely helped their traffic. I sell about 1/10 as much stuff through Blujay.com as I do on eBay, and it accounts for more than 1/4 of my profits -- or it did until this month (I just made a large volume sale to a school directly, without eBay or PayPal), mainly because the cost of selling there is much lower.

Craig's List was also a viable alternative, but since they have sold out to eBay, I expect that to change.

Unfortunately, in the Internet world, there is a strong tendency for the market leader to completely dominate, and #2 is way down in the noise. The #1 position can change, however... If GooglePay ever becomes reality, eBay and PayPal are going to be in serious trouble.

For now, eBay is still the place to get some real bargains -- if you are careful. That's because the typical eBay seller has no clue what her/his actual costs are, and is often selling at a loss. The vast majority of eBay sellers last about 6-9 months before the clue-stick smites them in the form of running out of money. Just stay away from the really huge ripoff-potential items like laptops and consumer electronics sold at ridiculous prices by people you have never heard of. And do some research on what you are buying; in particular, don't get in a hurry and skim through the auction description, and take some time to read the negs and neutrals in the feedback log. Check out the history of the seller. Use PayPal if you can't use a credit card directly. Don't even look at auctions with private bid lists or one-day limits (the one-day auctions with private bidders and private feedback are roughly 100% fraudulent, and there is no way that eBay can be unaware of this).

There's no reason not to use Google for bargain hunting: http://www.froogle.com/

Absolutely agreed. I can't even begin to count the number of times a friend has come back from an online purchase, and ebay purchase, (and even some brick & mortar purchases) all impressed with the deal they got, and my search on froogle brings up the same item for significantly less than they paid for it.

http://www.froogle.com/ is your friend.

Froogle still has BETA in the corner, does that mean its not open to the public too? GMail will probably always be in "beta" because that way they have no liability if it fucks up. As for it being open to the public, I'm guessing that it's slowly being offered to those random users until the point where they feel that they can handle everyone and their brother signing up for an account. Sure all of us who know about it and want an account have one already, but we're nerds.. you can't say that about the rest of the sheep. :)

Firefox with two tabs: 49,532K Opera with two tabs: 20,188K Opera with 13 tabs: 31,780K

Cost of 29,164KB of RAM: $4.00. Cost of Opera: $40.00. Software freedom: priceless.

(But hey, if Opera makes you happy, then I'm happy for you.)

memory sticks becoming very affordable with a large sizes (a 512k stick $80)

After searching around @ froogle, I think you meant to say 512 MEGABytes for $80.00. ahhhh, 1,00 times cheaper now. :-O

First, decide what parts to use by looking at Tom's hardware or some other site you trust that builds extreme machines for testing the latest components. This is where you get your template.

Then go to Pricewatch and maybe froogle to find the lowest prices on the components while double checking the vendors reputation on Reseller Ratings.

Finally, have a friend who has a little experience come over and put that beauty together.

I spec'ed out a top of the line Alienware machine against building my own with the same or better components and cut the price by more than half.

Pricewatch! its the best. pricewatch.

Froogle is pretty good too.


But never buy from tiger direct! they have done many bad things to people, myself included (overcharding, damaged merchendise, etc). Same with best buy, except if by damaged merchandise, you mean selling a geforce2 in a raedeon 8500 box (this happened to my friend a couple years ago).

Even if Booble has sales content, there is no satire or parody of Google involved.

It is satire/parody of Google in that Google created Froogle. Booble takes Google to task for altering their Google trademark to create Froogle.

And Booble isn't alone in its mimickry of Google's appearance either.

There may be some small chance that people do in fact mistake it for the original. As google grows it is creating additional "oogle" type spin-offs like Froogle . As people start to assume that this pattern is Google technology, approved of , etc. Having a site out there that seems to fit the pattern and you don't own is an infringment and a liability - particularly if the site is argueably disreputable. I think that right now, if it deals with searching, Google is the de facto owner of www._oo_le.com where you can fill in the blanks. I also think that's reasonable.

-T

They're working on it. It's called Froogle.

Just FYI

Amazon is way behind on this as well, as froogle.com even though in beta is already quite usable and is pretty much just as successful at finding product online as well as google is at finding relevant websites.

They make some much cheaper models ($200-300), but the Olie model would be pretty cool to have.

If vendors are allowed to collect such information in order to better target pricing, shouldn't purchasers be allowed to have access to 'perfect' pricing data to allow a fully informed choice? That is, shouldn't vendors be forced to release their pricing formulas and consumers be allowed to build web sites to compare these prices?

Vendors are allowed to collect information about consumers. Consumers are allowed to collect information about vendors. How is this unbalanced?

Consumers areallowed to build web sites to compare prices. Usually, vendors actively cooperate with such efforts.

I just went and checked Froogle and Sd memory ranged $42- $70 and Memory Stick ranged $50-$70 for 128mb. So the low end is a bit cheaper.

Both Lexar and Sandisk make Memory Sticks, so it is not a proprietary format. It is patented so you need to pay Sony royalties to use it, hence not a lot of electronic devices use the slot besides Sony's.

BTW everything you mentioned for Sd is already out for Memory Stick.

According to Google News, even this retard's babbling counts as "news." See?

I think Google News needs to filter their sources list down. Otherwise, it will become just as useless as Froogle, which provides links to many web pages which are not in fact stores.

Froogle might be what you are talking about.