The Wall Street Journal recently ran a story about Google looking to compete with Amazon on quick shipping services. As a fan of Google's search algorithms and an Amazon prime customer, this is extremely interesting to me.
The first question I have is, who pays for shipping? With Amazon Prime, they get my $79 every year and on average it works out to be profitable up to around 16 items shipped. I average the cost about $5 per shipped item, less for blu-rays or more for bulky items, this comes to $80/5 or around 16 items. If you buy less than this within a year with Prime, Amazon thanks you for your continued donations for their services.
I doubt Google is going to move away from their ad supported model of revenue and their partners are not going to want to step up and eat the costs for a customer who is not yearly invested, like Amazon Prime, or even guaranteed to come back and purchase another item ever again. (This is similar to the current online coupon setup.) This makes it clear that Google will have to subsidize some of these shipping costs to get companies on board.
That's where this gets a little complicated. Let's say it's $1 for two day delivery of my new Gap sweater. Somehow this is missed and on the third day I get annoyed, but at who? If I contact Google, their going to point me at the Gap, and the Gap will either apologize and offer a credit, or blame some timing issue through Google. In other words, there's no single point of contact for the customer to focus on.
This is similar to my relationship with Android. I think it's a fantastic operating system and deserves heaps of praise. That is, when it comes directly from Google. As soon as you get some dubious distributors of Android who like to pack their phones with vulnerabilities and bloat ware, it takes a nose dive off the cliffs of quality. When Google works with other companies for fast shipping deals, it's once again entering into a pact that it doesn't have complete control over.
I think the Google quick ship can work, but it will not be close to the Amazon Prime level of integration and ease of use. Have you tried searching for a product through Google lately? For popular items like Black & Decker juicer or Uncharted 3, Amazon is always in one of those coveted top spots. Just getting past that for a new shipping service is going to be one heck of a battle.
Quick notes:
I don't have anything against the Gap. I own cloths from there and have usually been happy with my purchases. Also, as stated I am an Amazon Prime member and do a vast amount of my shopping through Amazon.com.
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