Google launches new ecommerce site on boutiques.com?

[Rob100]

It looks like google are away to launch a new ecommerce venture off the domain boutiques.com. I have an ecommerce site and this announcement worries me a bit. The fact they have moved to launch off a domain name is a step too far. If I am competing in the serps against boutique.com I wonder who is going to rank top?

I wonder if this could be a replacement for google products in the fashion sector and a sign of things to come?

Would be interested to see what people think

[techcrunch.com...]

[edited by: goodroi at 8:27 pm (utc) on Nov 15, 2010]

[edited by: engine at 7:07 pm (utc) on Nov 17, 2010]
[edit reason] added question mark to title - also, corrected domain name [/edit]

[iambic9]

The mistake "mom/pop online retail shops" made is building a business that relied on another company sending them customers. It's that simple.

Google is neither beast nor a borg, Google will not eat your children, they are simply a very large company that no longer hand out free slices of pie, they've taken the hard work that you've given them free access to and decided to make money from it, I'm not debating the rights and wrongs of it – just stating a fact – Google changed the game, mom & pop became dependant on the free traffic and don't have a clue what to do without it.

I own a company in the fashion sector, searches related to our brand dominate 9 of the 10 organic results on the first page, I keep tight control over how other companies re-use our content, I would most likely not permit our products to be a part of this, in much the same way I do not allow the SE's to crawl our images or store a cache copy of our site, I generally insist on dictating the environment in which our products are presented in, which is one of the main reasons we do not allow other companies to purchase from us wholesale – choosing instead to open our own shops – relying on wholesaling is much the same as relying on traffic from search engines – if it dries up, you're f***k*d.

[Reno]

The mistake "mom/pop online retail shops" made is building a business that relied on another company sending them customers.

Especially one that has clearly signaled its intention to move from partner to competitor. With this "boutique" announcement, the position that many find themselves in is the equivalent of running a family owned hardware store in a medium size town, only to read that Walmart is moving to the empty field down the street. You may compete for a few months, but after that, you are most likely toast. The fact is, and this has been proven in a bunch of studies, your former customers will drive by your door to get to Walmart, because correctly or not, they'll think that's where the best deals are to be found. Google will enjoy that same status ~ correctly or not.

.........................

[MWpro]

Google disgusts me more and more each day.

[graeme_p]

Isnt this a thin affiliate site in new clothes?

Yes.

How do you fight a thousand pound gorilla?

With content Google are not just fighting your little site, they are fighting millions of sites. If the concentrated fire power on your "red widgets" niche, they could wipe you out, but that is not what they are doing, they are trying to cover all of a huge industry.

Neither Google (nor MS, nor anyone else likely to try) has the resources to take on the the whole web. I thought sites like mine would be wiped out by Knol!

People forget that a lot of big companies (like Google, or MS) very often have one or two blockbuster products (as the pharmaceutical companies call them) that make most of the money, a few that make some money, and quite a few flops.