Thursday, October 12, 2017

Google Adds Target to Google Express, Enables Shopping from Google Assistant on Your Phone

Today, Google made two big announcements for those who prefer to leverage Google's services when shopping. The first is that Target is now available nationwide with free shipping (on orders above $35) for those who use Google Express to place their order. The other, and potentially bigger news, is that Google is bringing shopping capabilities to Google Assistant when you're using the virtual assistant on a supported smartphone or tablet.

Google has been working to expand their Google Express shopping service for a few years now. The company has integrated it into Google Home so you can place a simple order for things like candy or household goods using just your voice. Google Express only supports a certain number of retailers, but now Target has been officially added to the list to give you access to their items and brands including Up & Up household essentials and Cat & Jack kids' clothing.

They are offering free 2-day shipping with orders that exceed $35 (like many are used to with Google Home orders) and they'll even be adding additional features like using your REDcard to 5% off on most of your orders from Target. The other big announcement made by Google today is that shopping with Google Assistant on your smartphone or tablet is coming soon. The company has been experimenting with this using Google Home, but you can only do so much blind shopping with your voice.

As mentioned, ordering candy or household goods with your voice is easy because you know what you're getting every time. Shopping for some goods though can be more complex as it benefits the customer to actually see the product and compare it to others, as well as read specifications or item descriptions. With shopping coming to Google Assistant, you'll be able to access products from over 50 Google Express retailers so you have a huge inventory to choose from. This will be a major convenience for some online shoppers and it will finally let Google begin tackling the e-commerce market via personal assistants.

This is something that Amazon has a huge advantage in with their Echo products, but Google seems to be focusing on closing the gap. While Amazon is inherently poised to dominate e-commerce integration, Google seems to be making sure they are able to compete by offering some level of feature parity across their wide range of Assistant-enabled devices.


Source: The Keyword



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