It’s hard to define what’s true in tech journalism:Â
It’s hype and not so innocent like a carnival barker. Why, for example, does Google (and many other A-list tech companies) pour so much money, effort and soul-sucking bullshit into the semi-religious events such as product “unveilings,” conferences, trade shows and that all-elusive buzz. The very last thing that geeks do well is sexy, flashy “buzz.” No offense, geek here, too.
And so here we go. The Carousel of Progress brought to you by Google© has a very direct impact on those who manage entire ecommerce strategies. To contradict myself, I love that Google’s vibrant and changing and exploratory. What I’m not so cool about is the cost of adapting to what has become a nearly-authorized (in which we participate) rule. It’s kinda how I see an update on WordPress, which is: “fuck, what breaks, now?”
The major points with which I have an issue… I know, bad sentence but it’s my damn website:
Head-Up Mother Fucker
To prevent retailers from losing sales stemming from poor search results, Google introduced a Retail Search tool to provide customers with more precise search results when shopping online, Srikanth Belwadi, group product manager of Google Cloud, said in a blog post on Wednesday.
According to the announcement, the tool is equipped with advanced query understanding to give shoppers better search results and semantic search to match product traits with website content for discovery. The search tool optimizes results by harnessing user interaction and ranking models and also includes privacy practices that protect retailer data with access controls.
Uh huh.
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated e-commerce spending, but research suggests that consumers are still turning to stores for the majority of their purchases. A 2021 report from Forrester predicts that 72% of retail will occur in physical stores in 2024. Still, e-commerce grew by 30% in 2020, the highest growth since 2002, according to Forrester.
All quotes are from:
Google releases Retail Search tool to improve shopper discovery
Published March 31, 2022
By Tatiana Walk-Morris (pro-tip, Tatiana, you might want to read beyond the press release).