25 August, 2017
'Starting in late September, we'll be working with Google to offer hundreds of thousands of items for voice shopping via Google Assistant - the largest number of items now offered by a retailer through the platform, ' Marc Lore, Wal-Mart's head of e-commerce, said in a blog post. According to the Mountain View, Califronia-based firm, its new partnership with Walmart encompasses "hundreds of thousands of products" that consumers are now able to purchase by simply telling their AI assistant to do so or by using the Google Express mobile app.
Google and Walmart chose to take their rivalry with Amazon to the next step, so they made a decision to start a partnership which they hope will help them beat their adversary.
You can read the full Google and Walmart announcements on the partnership here and here. The Google Express fee is gone.
Google is also lifting its $95 annual membership fee that is charged for Google Express shopping service so that the customers who are placing orders directly from Google Home or Google Express wouldn't have to pay anything unless of course, they upkeep the minimum amount of purchase needed for free shipping. Wal-Mart is teaming up with Google to keep its customers from moving to Amazon through these devices.
In 2016, Amazon controlled 43 percent of the total online retail sales in the U.S. That's a massive number for a single brand, and the scary part is that it's only going to continue to grow. Granted, Google and Walmart are really only partnering on one specific aspect of each of their enterprises, but with the two work and company cultures being so vastly different, it is enough to give one pause when imagining how interaction would play out between the two. After integration of Amazon prime into Whole Foods Market point-of-sale system, prime members to get special savings, in-store benefits. Researches show that instead of using the search engine people are now looking up for products directly on Amazon.
In the name of convenience, Amazon and Walmart are pushing people to shop by just talking to a digital assistant.
