Google Inc is pondering an Internet service to help consumers shop online and take advantage of same-day delivery, hoping to stanch the loss of Web traffic to Amazon.com Inc, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Thursday.
The Internet search leader is in talks with major retailers and shippers, including Macy’s, Gap Inc and OfficeMax, to set up the service, the newspaper cited people familiar with the matter as saying.
Google declined to comment and Amazon did not return calls for comment. A Gap spokeswoman declined to comment, while Macy’s and OfficeMax were not available for comment.
Photo: AFP
Google may be casting a wary eye on the popularity of Amazon.com’s Prime service — which offers free two-day shipping for US$79 a year in the US — fearing it will entice away the Web traffic it depends on from its own sites.
About 40 percent of Google’s revenue comes from retail sources, ChannelAdvisor chief executive Scot Wingo said.
Amazon Prime has been such a big success in recent years that it has begun to threaten this big chunk of Google’s revenue, Wingo said.
“Once a consumer joins Amazon Prime, their searches for products at Google have to decrease precipitously,” Wingo wrote in a blog on Thursday.
He owns Google and Amazon shares.
“As a Prime user, I only look for products on Google and other channels if I can’t find it on Amazon,” Wingo added. “Amazon has created a lock-in and they have the world’s best product search engine. That’s 40 percent of the Internet that Google really can’t afford to lose serious share on.”
Google’s plan under consideration stops short of selling directly to consumers, WSJ cited a person familiar with the matter as saying.
Google will instead work with retailers’ Web sites, combining an existing product-search feature that directs shoppers to those sites, with a new shipping service that it intends to create and oversee, the WSJ reported.
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Property transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities plunged last month, as a lengthy Lunar New Year holiday combined with ongoing credit tightening dampened housing market activity, data compiled by local land administration offices released on Monday showed. The six cities recorded a total of 10,480 property transfers last month, down 42.5 percent from January and marking the second-lowest monthly level on record, the data showed. “The sharp drop largely reflected seasonal factors and tighter credit conditions,” Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday fell in February this year, reducing
Taiwan has enough crude oil reserves for more than 100 days and sufficient natural gas reserves for more than 11 days, both above the regulatory safety requirement, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, adding that the government would prioritize domestic price stability as conflicts in the Middle East continue. Overall, energy supply for this month is secure, and the government is continuing efforts to ensure sufficient supply for next month, Kung told reporters after meeting with representatives from business groups at the ministry in Taipei. The ministry has been holding daily cross-ministry meetings at the Executive Yuan to ensure
New vehicle sales in Taiwan plunged about 37 percent sequentially last month as the long Lunar New Year holiday and 228 Peace Memorial Day holiday cut short the number of working days, along with the lingering uncertainty over import tax cuts on US vehicles, market researcher U-Car said in a report yesterday. New car sales last month totaled 22,043, slumping from 35,073 units in January and down 19.89 percent from 37,515 in February last year, U-Car data showed. Sales of imported luxury cars, led by Mercedes-Benz, plummeted about 45 percent to 3,109 units last month from 5,663 units in the previous month,
RSS