Google Introduces Same-Day Shipping to Compete With eBay and Amazon

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/03/google-delivery/

by mlschmitt23 • 13 years ago

45 45 13 years ago

IgorPartola3• 13 years ago

Damn. Another closed pilot program that is area limited. In the mean time, my Amazon Prime is due for a renewal. I think I'll go and fork over $80 to them for another year of free two day shipping.

samwise• 13 years ago

It's not free if you have fork over $80. But nonetheless a great service.

IgorPartola3• 13 years ago

Yes, my bad on the poor phrasing. However, for the past year I averaged under $1.5/package and considering I bought some really big items that is pretty close to free.

r00fus• 13 years ago

I don't see Google's pilot as a competitor to Amazon at this stage. I will still buy on Amazon (mainly large things that I can wait for but I get better pricing on).

However, if Google can get a diverse enough vendor pool to compete with Amazon on enough stuff (much like they did with Android vs. the iPhone), then they have a very powerful story.

tga2• 13 years ago

Google was never capable to set up the simplest working order and check out system for the two types of phones/tickets they ever tried to sell and they're going to compete with Amazon? That should be entertaining to watch.

Also, forget about customer service. You got billed twice or your items never arrived? Feel free to post on the forums and wait for your neighbour down the street to reply with his impressions, since he's already had the same thing happening twice so he's now a community expert.

chucknelson• 13 years ago

Yeah, I would say customer service is one of the major shortcomings of Google right now. I would think with their transition to producing and selling physical products that would be something they have to improve on soon.

tjbiddle• 13 years ago

I would disagree on that. For their physical products they've actually had very good customer support - When I had questions about my Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 coming in I was able to get a support rep very quickly and have my questions answered. A friend of mine just had to send back his Nexus 4 and had the same result - Great service and a new phone sent within a day or two.

Obviously their track record for their online support is definitely subpar, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the physical field.

Although, I will admit - If their shopping experience is anything like that of the Nexus 4 launch this will be a laugh.

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

I had the same sort of thought. What are they thinking will happen here? I mean it would be great if this actually pushes the customer service issue into an action but that doesn't seem to be part of their "core competencies" to use some last century marketing speak.

turing• 13 years ago

Earlier this year I was billed twice in the Play Store. I emailed customer service, and they replied and removed the charge in about an hour. I also purchased a Nexus 4 on launch day, and none of my interactions with customer service were particularly unpleasant. Granted, others may have had different experiences, but I'm not sure why it has become so trendy to mock Google's customer service.

tga2• 13 years ago

You're describing two episodes of competent customer service. Nothing incredible, just good work from a company you're paying money to. The problem is not with their quality -- once you do get someone on your case, it won't be a minimum wage script reader in India, but rather someone pleasant who can actually help. The negative perception of Google customer service stems from an apparent disinterest in providing proper support channels in the first place for some of their services, which leads to many unhappy episodes pulling their average down.

I do believe this is a problem they can fix by just throwing money at it. Customer service is not rocket science, hire enough decent people and give them some leeway and they'll make everyone happy.

mbreese4• 13 years ago

So, they kill Reader, but somehow this is germane?

shawndumas• 13 years ago

"This, from the company that shitcanned Google Reader because they wanted to “focus”."

--http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/03/28/google-shopping-...

IgorPartola3• 13 years ago

To be fair, with Reader the thought probably was "we will aggregate online content created by others and will add ads to the result. Then profit!" This was replaced with "we will aggregate social content, the add lots of ads. Then profit!"

The thought with Express might go like this: "By pushing the envelope on buying things online, more people will buy thing online than offline, expanding the e-commerce universe. This would translate into higher advertising fees. Then profit."

In other words, they believe that expanding e-commerce will be more profitable than helping two dozen power users consume mostly as free content easier.

Samuel_Michon4• 13 years ago

“with Reader the thought probably was "we will aggregate online content created by others and will add ads to the result. Then profit!" This was replaced with "we will aggregate social content, the add lots of ads. Then profit!"”

And why didn't they just do that? They gave no explanation whatsoever. Google Reader has/had millions of users, surely Google could've capitalized on that.

alec• 13 years ago

Google makes money by showing ads to people who want to buy things.

If everyone goes to eBay and Amazon instead of Google to buy things, no one will buy ads from Google.

If Google can provide a compelling alternative to eBay and Amazon, they reduce the risk that people stop shopping on Google and that people stop buying ads on Google.

This looks like Google focusing on their bottom line.

mbreese4• 13 years ago

But they aren't exactly targeting online shopping via Google. They are using established retailers that aren't exactly known for showing Google ads on their sites. So, I don't quite see how this fits.

mikeash2• 13 years ago

One of a couple of glaring examples today of how biased and emotion-driven DF is.

martythemaniak• 13 years ago

Ruining HN by turning every Google-related discussion into a snark-filled pile of garbage isn't going to bring Reader back. Can you guys consider moving on?

Samuel_Michon4• 13 years ago

“Ruining HN by turning every Google-related discussion into a snark-filled pile of garbage isn't going to bring Reader back.”

Well, we can try ;) Anyways, I've reached a level of discontent that I wouldn't come back to Google Reader even if Google promised to keep it running indefinitely.

I'm ditching Google entirely, I only need to cancel my Analytics accounts (I switched to http://www.haveamint.com/). DuckDuckGo works fine for search, IMAP works fine for email, http://www.feedafever.com/ works fine for RSS, Vimeo works fine for video, and Dropbox works fine for online storage.

avree• 13 years ago

Wow, that's confusing branding. Same name and very similar icon to a popular finance analytics product, Mint.

bambax2• 13 years ago

I'm not sure what comment(s) you're referring to, but at the time of this writing the top comment, although snark-filled, doesn't have anything to do with Reader.

Google sucks big time at customer service, they always have and HN is filled with horror stories of customers (real paying customers) running into walls and interacting with stupid robots when trying to sort things out.

And now they want to compete with Amazon? Amazon?!? Amazon reinvented customer service, in a way that makes it impossible to shop anywhere else once you've experienced them.

At this point, "what are they thinking?" is a very legitimate question.

mbreese4• 13 years ago

Probably referring to mine... which was rightly downvoted to the bottom because it didn't add anything to the conversation. Although, if that's the case, the GP should have been a reply to my comment, but anyway.

Since I can't edit that comment, I'll elaborate here.

The problem that I have with this isn't with "Reader". I just don't see how this has any benefit to Google. They aren't selling items. They are just delivering them. Does this go through some kind of Google online-mall, or will it go through the retailer's standard site?

The real question that needs to be answered is: what's in it for Google? What they've made clear lately is that for something to take hold, it needs to be in their interest. And I just don't see the upside here.

That's not to say I don't see a market for the service (I signed up to be a tester). I just don't see how it fits with Google.

barry-cotter• 13 years ago

I'm not bitter about Reader, I haven't been able to use it for over a year. I still find the idea of Google not sucking at customer service unlikley. They do not have any history of not sucking at customer service.

Think of it like this; if you hear a good customer service story from Google it's a huge surprise, like hearing about a part of Amazon whose corporate culture and work environment is not a toxic cesspit.

Over time, if you hear enough of these stories, they stop being surprising, but I have seen multiple people on this forum complaining about Google being unreachable when they spend tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Google's reputation for customer service is well earned.

angkec• 13 years ago

first comment on the article page:

"Good thing google is focusing like a laserbeam . . . on . . . I dunno."

dxbydt2• 13 years ago

> "You’ll get free, unlimited same-day delivery for six months. That’s six months of having toilet paper delivered for free"

Ok, but delivered by regular human in regular car ? No thanks. I want delivery by unmanned google-cars. For that, I'll even pay premium shipping.

jfoster• 13 years ago

Actually, it might be through self driving cars. Probably come with a regular human, though. See: http://m.digitaltrends.com/lifestyle/google-plans-to-use-sel...

dxbydt2• 13 years ago

Sir, that is fucking awesome! But why the human ? A Nao (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2STTNYNF4lk ) would do. I would bark at Siri for toilet paper, the self driving google car would arrive within minutes with toilet paper, a Nao would walk in through the door, I'd drop my pants, he'd wipe my butt with my newly purchased toilet paper & I'd tip him handsomely and he'd be driving off to the next customer's anus.

smackfu2• 13 years ago

Really? I think UPS is just fine... they know where my condo is better than Google Maps, and they walk up to the door and put it on the porch and ring the bell.

smackfu2• 13 years ago

I guess that's nice if you live in San Francisco. Same day delivery doesn't exactly seem that challenging if you only deliver to a 30 minute radius.

sterlingross• 13 years ago

Well, considering that it can often take 30 minutes to travel 2 blocks in SF, getting something delivered the same day might be challenging.

Unless you had self-driving cars with real time map data.

up_and_up• 13 years ago

> 30 minutes to travel 2 blocks in SF

Sounds like you may be doing it wrong. I lived there for 4 years. Public transit, biking options etc were all decent.

You talking about on the 101 during rush hour? I bet their algos would easily avoid that.

scottmp10• 13 years ago

I am not sure how the logistics work with participating stores but I would really like to see them make this an easy way for small local businesses to compete with Amazon. Basically a platform for them to list their products and the logistics to collect and deliver them.

This service seems to be mostly orthogonal to Instacart in that Instacart provides perishables but you can only order from a single shop at a time where with Express you can order products from across multiple stores but they focus more on non-grocery items.

Looking forward to trying it.

mbreese4• 13 years ago

I'd like to see it work for small businesses too, but their initial launch stores all seem to be loaded with bigger companies (Target, Walgreens, Toy R Us).

Zenst• 13 years ago

Same day shipping is not that hard to handle if you only sell what you hae in stock ready to ship. It is same day arrival that we all dream of, like we get with shops. With that shipping the same day is fine as long as it gets to the user quicker, they don't care if you shop the next day as long as it arrives the same. With that it is worth noting that shopping the same day just means it got processed and into collection and even then they could have hourly trucks and count that as dispatched.

Now as long as they provide a tracking number(AWB) or the like you can see the progress with, then that does help greatly. If you can even have GPS tracking the last part and notification when hour away or within 5 minutes, well that would be great.

So that is why I don't get too excited about same day shipping. It is the hubs inbetween and there cut-off times that divide up the day so you could ship at 11pm and miss the 10pm cutoff for the hub transit and have to wait until the next one at 10am. In that case for you it makes no difference if 11pm or 9am. Though anybody who has had tracking information will know how weird some routes can be and wonder why they sit for almost half a day at some locations. Then there are customs if different countries are involved and more fun.

For me better item tracking would win over same day dispatch. I'd take a 5 day delivery window over a 1 day one if it meant I could refine the delivery time to a hour and not AM/PM. Though that may just be me.

huggah• 13 years ago

The objective is same-day arrival, and it works pretty reliably as long as you order by 3pm or so (in my area, at least). More importantly, you're given a clear indication when you order when you will actually get it (you can choose a delivery window, and see which ones are greyed out).

The delivery windows go as late as 9pm, so I'm sure they will try to push back the last time at which you can order and still get it delivered same-day.

OGinparadise• 13 years ago

my question are these: how is shopping and consumer service a Google thing? And how long before this is shut down and google starts, say making shoes? Focus on their strengths and all.

You cannot build a great customer service team overnight, no matter how much you throw at it.

Google Introduces Same-Day Shipping to Compete With eBay and Amazon

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