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Google Base To Replace Froogle

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the goog-to-the-froog-to-the-woog dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google plans to introduce a new shopping feature in time for the holiday season. Soon products on Google Base will be searchable via the regular search box. Simultaneously, Google intends to de-emphasize its own Froogle shopping search engine; Google intends for Froogle to no longer be a standalone Web site." From the article: "When people search for products on Google.com, the system will present them with another search box so that they can refine their query, according to Bear Stearns & Co analysts. After people refine their query, Google takes them to a second page populated with product results from the Google Base listings service. 'Ranking will be determined by the attributes that the sellers listed for the product as well as by relevancy,' the analysts wrote. Currently, Google has no plans to monetise this product-search capability with display ads or listing fees, but that could change, they wrote. "

4 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Great, Froogle was a waste... by marshmallow+soup · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Froogle was a good idea that was poorly executed. Searching for anything other than a specific product returned pages and pages of listings for the same item under slightly diffent names. I hope any integration of Froogle into the main index will include a better system for managing dupes than Froogle had.

  2. This is wrong. by Gabrill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I already get a bunch of shopping links whenever I search information on products. I use Google less and less because I can't find information relevant to anything BUT shopping.

    --
    Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
    1. Re:This is wrong. by owlnation · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I wholeheartedly agree. I think the balance has been tipped on Google some time ago. I find it very difficult to search for anything on Google without including a whole bunch of qualifiers like -amazon, -ebay, -checkout, -shopping, etc...

      Having said that, in principle I do like the idea of Google promoting Base. This World desperately and urgently needs a strong eBay competitor, and a Cragslist competitor too for that matter. (Craigslist being the nouveau chic site de jour for spammers and scammers - and that's one org that's letting them all win hands down. Since their staff don't review listings, Craigslist even has a neat way of spammers find out their marketing penetration using the report spam button on the listings - you can figure out how many folk saw your ad by how long it stays up - yay! a free gift to all spammers! Seriously, why wouldn't you want to spam on Craigslist!!!?).

      What would be great though is if Google could allow users to choose to avoid Base if they wished - in the way they could with Froogle. If I want information from the web, I rarely want to buy it. If I want to buy something from the web, I know where to look. There's rarely any overlap. I doubt I am alone in that.

      Or, if any smart person would happen to know of, or would like to develop a Firefox extension to filter out shopping sites in search, I for one would be eternally grateful.

  3. Re:Great, Froogle was a waste... by antifoidulus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not to mention a huge conflict of interest. Froogle didn't directly get commissions if you looked at/bought something, but did sell contextual ads. So what should google do if the person who buys the advertisement has a slightly higher price than someone who came up on froogle. The ad buyer just wasted money so the other guy could get a sale. Not to mention it calls into question how accurate everything really is on froogle. I mean, do ad buyers get preference in the search results?

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    Monstar L