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Google Makes Push To Turn Product Searches Into Cash (reuters.com)
Reuters reports of how Google is working to turn product searches into cash by partnering with some of the largest retailers in the United States: Under a new program, retailers can list their products on Google Search, as well as on the Google Express shopping service, and Google Assistant on mobile phones and voice devices. In exchange for Google listings and linking to retailer loyalty programs, the retailers pay Google a piece of each purchase, which is different from payments that retailers make to place ads on Google platforms. The listings will appear under sponsored shopping results and will not affect regular search results on Google, the company said. Google's pitch to retailers is a better chance to influence shoppers' purchasing decisions, a move that is likely to help them compete with rival Amazon. Google hopes the program helps retailers capture more purchases on desktop, cell phones and smart home devices with voice search -- the next frontier for e-commerce. The previously unreported initiative sprang from Google's observation that tens of millions of consumers were sending image searches of products, asking "Where can I buy this?" "Where can I find it?" "How can I buy it?" "How do I transact?" Daniel Alegre, Google's president for retail and shopping, told Reuters exclusively.
If you need to buy something, start at Amazon. Google Shopping or whatever it is called is a disaster. They don't know what they are doing.
I spend so much time fighting with Google's intrusive results these days I could hardly even care. The first search engine that builds a sizable index where I can manipulate the search without AI getting in the way, and I'm gone. DuckDuckGo is the closest but their index is about 1/10th the size it needs to be.
I'm so sick of "Google knows best", inserted images/twitter/"news"/etc, "movies playing in ireland" when I search for "irish movies", and all sorts of other fuckwitterty. I mean why the hell do I care what other people searched? Other people are idiots based on the crap that comes up.
My experience is that Google(TM!) delivers worse to much worse results today than before. Searching for a certain document I know is available, searchable (not hidden away with robots.txt etc) and not on an obscure site often gives pages after pages of places that doesn't match the search at all or only when "correcting" 50%+ of the search terms. Even when adding terms related to e.g. computers, computer architecture etc. that the wanted document covers the results are hit and miss often with the highest ranking results being completely irrelevant and badly matching. Don't understand it at all.
Google is still the best search engine sadly.
That seems like it is today and not when Google started. Correcting search terms to something related that is more popular to search for instead of actually doing the search requested. Again that's how it's today and not before Google started making their engine cater to sloppy searches by sloppy people.