Google Resetting Its eCommerce Strategy Again?

If there is one thing you can count since Google launched its free Froooooogle product shopping engine launched in 2002, it will either change its entire eCommerce approach in the next 2 years, or it will just give up altogether for a certain period.

Until the next executive comes in and "resets" the strategy.

Since at least 2005, they have claimed to be desperately worried about the rise of Amazon, but approach after approach to blunt its rise has failed.

Which makes me wonder, does Google do post-mortems? ;-)

Anywho -- a new executive is here in eCommerce! Prabhakar Raghavan. He reports into Bill Ready, who I guess thankfully for Google is still around because at least there is some continuity. Prabhakar runs search, maps, payments, as well as eCommerce.

The approach seems to be an information-oriented approach rather than a logistics-oriented approach. Which is probably smart for Google.

Personally if Google can do for eCommerce what it does for Flights, I would love it. Design a journey that fits the needs of the user in various categories. Google's domain should be research, recommendations, consideration, and reviews. Frankly Amazon is a disaster for some of this stuff now, a mess of ads. Amazon is not as consumer-focused as it used to even 7 years ago. There is opportunity here.

Problem is many eCommerce products have a different buying journey, but if anyone has enough data to solve the problem, in theory it should be Google right?

Of course, I've said this pretty much the past 15 years too. Another reboot, let's see what happens.