Thursday, October 20, 2005

Google Mobile Shop


This is the same scenario John Battelle described on 60 Minutes TV show when he was asked what Google could do with mobile search.

From Wine.com Intent-based marketing


In The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture (Penguin, 2005) John Batelle presents a hi-tech scenario of Saturday morning shopping at the wine store

Making a few changes to add local flavour: 'you've got Google Mobile Shop installed on your phone... you wand it over the R500 bottle of 2001 Columella now lovingly cradled in your arm.

In less than a second, a set of options is presented on the phone's screen. It reads '2001 Columella, Swartland appellation, South Africa. Average retail price R380 (click here for more); click here for a list of prices at nearby stores; click here for stores selling similar items; click here for reviews of 2001 Columella; click here for more on this vendor [ecological impact, vendor labour policies]...'

Three things need to happen before this nerdy daydream becomes a reality: the UPC barcode system must be made available as a web service; merchants must make their inventories available to internet browsers and finally barcode readers need to be installed on cell phones.

As the Financial Times notes, 'the foundation of the $100 billion marketing industry is shifting to a new search-engine based model.' With 1.7 billion mobiles in use by next year, most with internet capability, the market is enormous.

Yes, I agree. I think the Next Google is an application that allows access to ALL OF GOOGLE'S search/information functions on the mobile phone.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The killer app on the mobile would be to tie the search with location and personal preferences. The results should not be any more than 10 per query. When an Item is searched on, the user should able to find the price of the item in the 5 closest stores from where the user is located. Also what discounts are available in which store. Now that is a killer application for me.

They can also tie searches with coupons/deals to entice the buyer to make the purchase.