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Google Opens First Retail Outlet In London
theodp writes "Google is following in the footsteps of Apple and Microsoft. The London Evening Standard reports that the world's first 'Google Store' has opened in a PC World on London's gadget street, Tottenham Court Road. Officially known as 'the Chromezone,' the 285sq. ft. pop-up 'shop within a shop,' which only sells Google's Chromebook laptop and a few accessories such as headphones, will run for three months up to Christmas. But if the low-key experiment is successful, Google could follow Apple in opening permanent stores around the world. 'It is our first foray into physical retail,' said Google's Arvind Desikan. 'This is a new channel for us and it's still very, very early days. It's something Google is going to play with and see where it leads.'"
Microsoft thanks you for contribution.
Just wondering what physical item google has for sale? RFID kits so you can outfit every item in your home and search it's location in your home via google search?
where are my keys?
I'm feeling lucky
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
But if the low-key experiment is successful, Google could follow Apple in becoming evil. 'It is our first foray into evil,' said Google's Asmodeus Dessicant. 'This is a new channel for us and it's still very, very early days. It's something Google is going to play with and see where it leads.'"
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
People interested in checking it out should use the Warren st. tube station rather than TCR.
I think the Nexus One would have been a lot more successful if they had physical stores... I mean I'm still using mine and love it (it's a device you can really get attached to, despite its flaws and that it's outdated) but I've only ever seen one other one in the wild (other than at Maker Faire SF, where dozens of Google employees were using them).
Also, it would have been nice to have someplace to check out and buy the accessories and so on, especially on short notice when necessary.
Despite the fact that you can do everything online these days, there truly is still a major role for retail to play. I would be reluctant to buy a new and unusual computer like the Chromebook without being able to try one myself (as I'm sure people are with Apple products if they haven't used them before), so this will probably be a good strategy for them.
But you can only get to pay with Google Checkout. Which sits right next to useless.
Why aren't such stores obsolete yet? This is an honest question. Especially for Google, that has online access to billions of customers worldwide, what would such a store offer? For Apple it worked because part of their marketing strategy is to dazzle you with fancy plastic. Is Google trying to do the same?
If there was a Google store in my neighborhood, I would probably drop by out of curiosity. However, whenever I go to an electronics retail store the salesperson ends up ordering the stuff I need anyway because they don't have what I want in stock (and, with my luck, even if they once did they would have probably run out). OK, if all you have to offer is 2-3 versions of the same hardware, your stock will always be up-to-date. However, I still don't see any good enough reason for embracing the costs and the trouble of physical retail sale.
Physical, Schmizical. IT Services is where the money is to be made! Like with IBM, or maybe the new HP. Google could offer paid assistance in their shops for folks who are having problems with Google products. And judging by how often I read here on Slashdot, "Oh, google it yourself!", apparently a lot of folks have problems googling themselves. Let alone other Google products.
Think of a Google Shop as a computer fitness service center . . . with your own Personal Google Cloud Trainer!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Ah, it's the me-too company again.
AltaVista: we do search!
Google: me too!
Hotmail: we do online mail
Google: me too!
Nokia: We do smartphones
Apple: we do too, and added touch and apps
Google: me too! and we added nothing.
Sun: We do Java
Google: Me too! Allegedly.
Everyone: We do instant messaging
Google: Me too!
Facebook: We do social
Google: Me too!
Sony/Apple: We do brand-specific shops
MS & now Google: me too!
Bah. I will never understand the love geeks give to this copycat advertising company.
It is funny to have a store for the people that are not the customers. We are google's product, the advertisers and the carriers are the customers.
--ditkin
COURT ROAD, Tottenham, Friday (NTN) — Internet advertising agency Google is opening its first retail store, selling the Internet-only Chromebook.
"We've put a lot of effort into making it feel welcoming, homely and, dare I say it, 'Googley'," said Arvind Desikan, head of consumer marketing. The revolutionary shopping experience leverages Google's famous abilities in customer service, having no staff. Customers seeking advice on a product can simply log in with their Google account to the in-store forum, where they and other customers can assist each other.
"People will be able to go in and have a play with the devices, so they can get a feel for what it's about and we can monitor their reaction." Persons seeking entry to the store must give their bank account name and glue an RFID tag to their forehead, so as to create a suitably decorous shopping environment, "just like in real life." Should they be discovered to be using a name the Google Identity algorithm considers unlikely, they will be ejected mid-purchase and their GMail and Android phone disabled, for their comfort and convenience.
The store is in Tottenham Court Road, so as to select for the valuable demographic of people who want shiny things and are willing to pay a hundred quid more than they would for an ordinary netbook that does more. A second store will be opened in Lakeside for customers of similar discernment.
The Google store still anticipates more customers than the Microsoft stores. Rumours of the purchase of a Windows 7 phone somewhere in Britain are as yet unconfirmed, despite investigations by sceptics' organisations.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
When Apple decided to build their own retail operation, they had a problem to solve. Existing retailers were doing a very poor job of presenting their products. I remember a time where if you saw a Mac at all at a store that sold PCs, it was usually missing a few keys from the keyboard, and if it was powered up, it was flashing the "sad mac" icon. There were a handful of Mac-only resellers who did a better job of it, but there certainly weren't enough of them. Retail was crucial to Apple's survival.
For an outfit like Google or Microsoft, retail is just something they think they should do because Apple did it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Also, the rack in the background looks messy, and not well thought-through.
Even worse, there's an entire PC World shop in the background, with all the aesthetics you'd expect from a shed full of overpriced printer cartridges and copies of Norton Antivirus at the grimmer end of Tottenham Ct Rd - there's a reason why most fashion boutiques do not open 'pop-up shops' in branches of Lidl or Walmart:
http://www.talkandroid.com/48645-pc-world-will-have-the-samsung-galaxy-tab-10-1-starting-august-3/
http://www.t3.com/news/worlds-first-google-chrome-zone-opens-in-london
Presumably the main job of the Google employees will be desperately trying to steer the customers away from the cheaper fully-functional netbooks 50 feet away in the main shop.
Incidentally, this is not the first 'Chrome Zone':
http://www.virginamerica.com/vx/chromezone
Yes.
Sure, except for the part where it's true. Hell, it's even in their 10-K filing. Go ahead, read it. You can find it online.
The problem with Google opening retail stores is that Google is trying to drastically change their business model from one where advertisers are their customers to one where the dude walking down the street is the customer. Right now the dude walking down the street is a *user* - he recognizes the Google brand name because he uses it, but he's never drooled at the mouth over a Google product. He's drooled at the mouth over Apple's Macbooks and iPads, he's drooled at the mouth over Coach leather wallets, or Sony's Grand Wega TVs, his wife drools over Prada and Chanel bags, these are products they aspire to own, brands they want to show off to their friends and to other people walking down the street. Aspirational brands.
Google was only aspirational in the early years when only the cool, in-the-know people used Google and the riff-raff used Altavista or Yahoo. Google is now just a utility that everybody uses. Everyone knows the name, like Microsoft, but nobody wants to pay for the privilege of getting more use of a utility. Especially one that makes their bucks out of shoving advertising down your throat.
Google's mistake is that they need to be following a multi-brand strategy. Google is the search engine/utility brand. They should acquire a nice aspirational technology brand that they can use to market consumer products. Far smaller companies in other market segments follow this strategy with much success when there is an inherent incompatibility between their primary's brand's meaning and identity and their objectives with part of their business.
A company like Roku that offered a somewhat sexy, consumer electronics brand would have been a good acquisition target for Google, for example, rather than their miserably failed Google TV strategy. Roku would have to have been even more sexied-up to work out properly though. Maybe even better - a perpendicular brand like Lamborghini from the automobile space that already licenses well in non-automotive products and could be extended into a full-fledged, full-line consumer electronics brand of aspirational products.
If you want to play in a space, you got to do it right. There's no excuse for dicking around when you have the kind of resources Google has.
There's Google store in Mountain View, at the 'plex. They sell the same products as their online store.
I don't believing they're paying up yet.
Have they improved at all in the last 10 years? Last serious interaction I had was in trying to explain to their staff how their own extended support products work. A series of questions helped.
1) Who sold this?
2) Which company's name is on the paperwork?
3) If PC World sold this support contract, and the paperwork says that PC World are providing the support, does it make sense to tell a customer to contact the manufacturer in the expectation that they should honor the promises made by PC World?
It's very rewarding to see a brief glimmer of understand in their eyes. They'll hopefully apply their new-found curiosity for knowledge when they get sent on training - "Enterprise Masterclass: Using caps lock to make things all big"
Have you ever seen an Apple product? it's all unibody brushed aluminum now. PCs are, for the most part, rickety flexing plastic.
Retail for computers is back for a simple reason--how computers look and feel is more important now than it has ever been as computers have become increasingly portable and consumerized. People want to hold and feel it before buying.
Prices don't translate that easily. A price in American dollars often means the same in euros and only slightly less in pounds. Something our North American /, crowd seems to forget.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It depends on which manufacturer you buy it from. There are still some who don't pay protection.
built around one product that they also offer a few basically unimportant, buy anywhere, accessories.
sounds pretty ridiculous to me.
What is their slogan, "Come to the Chromezone where the only choose you will have to make is how many of our single product to buy"
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
They're hardly 'following in the footsteps of Apple and Microsoft' - Apple spent a fortune on the design of their stores to maximise the amount of time punters spend and maximise the opportunity to convert browsers to sales. I'm pretty sure MS did the same.
Google have setup a stall in the back of someone else's shop (and a chain that is very poorly regarded to boot!). That's not _quite_ the same thing.
I believe this is in anticipation for when they take over Motorola and have multiple phones to sell.
Do you seriously think that Apple doesn't license a single patent from Microsoft?
Google are significantly ahead, at the very least, with GMail (still cleanest webmail interface on the web, and best spam filters) and GTalk (full server-side chat logging with sync and search).
Would they sell the special chewing gum and soda drinks which are currently only available inside Google?
One actual "item" and a few accessories. Right. Whatever, it's Google, and we all know what that means: A lot of hype, and once the initial buzz settles down to the usual 17 "adopter/fans" Google will just walk away from it.