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Google Base To Replace Froogle
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. "
I gotta say, I love all things google, but froogle is absolutely horrible. It just gives you too much unrelated junk, and sort by price never works because of that. Try searching it for cheap iPods. You gotta first sort through 30 or 40 pages of iPod cases...with no real way to remove 'em all. It's best to just stick with sites like pricegrabber or even pricewatch unless you know VERY specifically what you want.
At least for me. Whenever I tried to use it the results I got weren't that great at all. By searching a few other sites I was often able to find cheaper prices than those found on Froogle. I'm not sure what the reason for that was, but it just didn't seem to find me the best prices.
Plus, on top of that it's search wasn't accurate enough. For instance, if I searched for "television" and "LCD" then it would throw in a bunch of peripheral items that I would then have to search through. Doing a search for that now seems to be a bit more accurate than last I checked though, perhaps they are making it more accurate.
Either way, combining it with the regular search engine would be a great idea in my opinion. That'll make it more efficient to do searches.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
"Google has no plans to monetise this product-search capability" Wrong, Google makes money when people buy things with the google checkout. They are creating a whole "buy it now" ebay type site with a single checkout. Fees are lower than paypal, and the checkout process is quick and easy. Google even gives you an anonymized email address during the checkout for each store. If only enough vendors would jump onboard, the site could really rock.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
After blowing cash on the Froogle brand, which nicely derives cachet from the Google brand while also implying that it is for frugual users, thereby it must save users money, to then run to a product called "Google Base" is stupidity. What does the "Base" mean? It has zero positive associations with shopping and price, and except for its association under the Google umbrella, zero assocation with anything else. Google has to grow up and stop change for the sake of change, when it wastes shareholder's money and ditches valuable brands for senseless no-brands.
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