Google's New Shopping Express Plan Is A True Competitor To Amazon Prime

Google (GOOGannounced Tuesday it would start offering a $95 annual membership for its same-day delivery service formerly known as Google Shopping Express. Now simply dubbed Google Express, the service offers delivery of goods such as clothing, books and packaged groceries from stores such as Costco, Target and Walgreens to customer doors on the same day, or day after, they are ordered.

Google had previously charged shoppers a $4.99 fee for each store a courier had to visit to complete an order, and nonmembers can now choose to pay $4.99 per order, not store visited.. There is also a $10 a month option. But for those who choose to pay the $95 annual membership, deliveries will be free for orders over $15.

Google’s membership is cheaper than Amazon’s (AMZN) $99 Prime membership, which delivers a massive array of goods to customer doors within two days, and Google’s pricing is not a coincidence. In June, Google Express product chief Tom Fallows told Re/code, “We are trying to democratize the world of same-day delivery.” (Amazon charges $299 for its Prime Fresh grocery delivery membership, but that includes the delivery of fresh produce and refrigerated items such as eggs, orange juice and yogurt, which Google Express doesn’t appear to.)

The end goal is to keep more people from fleeing Google for Amazon when they first search for a product. Each time someone searches for a product on Amazon instead of Google, the search giant loses a chance to serve up advertisements along with the search results. And advertisements, not toothpaste delivery, is still Google’s big business.

Read more on this story at re/code.

Shelly Palmer is Fox 5 New York's On-air Tech Expert (WNYW-TV) and the host of Fox Television's monthly show Shelly Palmer Digital Living. He also hosts United Stations Radio ...

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John Fitch 10 years ago Member's comment

This is great! While I love Amazon, it is always nice to have options. Competition is beneficial to the consumer.