Google Shopping on the High Street

Google Shopping have just launched a new app for iOS to allow quick access to their results from Apple's mobile devices. It's not a revolutionary concept but the ease of access to the results is certainly welcomed by those of us with iPhones in the TJS office. We have been helping our customers with Google Shopping by developing and submitting a data feed of their products for the past few years with good success. Anything that potentially widens that audience is a good thing and with Google Shopper, although not perfect (It's missing categories for a start), it is another step in the right direction to allow mobile price matching and research that we all could use when out on the high street. The ratings will be particularly useful. Google is really cranking up the new features and services this year and it looks like Microsoft are struggling to keep up in some areas. We do have our reservations about the legitimacy of the claims about Wikipedia in particular as they will correct the spelling but the other claims do appear to be a smoking gun. It could be seen as another way for Microsoft to improve their ranking and therefore the customer experience and as we've recently seen with Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7, they are doing well in that area at the moment. Whether it's "fair" to Google, with what is effectively stealing results without credit, is another matter.