The Google v Amazon battle is heating up. As both giants extend their electronics lineups, they are increasingly fighting for the same turf.
Google is making a push with Pixel, Home, and Nest products. Amazon has a huge hit with Echo, adding to their ever-growing lineup of popular electronics product lineups such as Fire and Kindle. Both are chasing perennial champ Apple in search of digital hardware gold.
Try to buy a Google Home product on Amazon. Not so easy. Amazon is (was?) the store where you could buy anything and everything. The Google Home absence is evidence of the uncomfortable Amazon retailer/competitor relationship more and more of its best-selling manufacturers are grappling with.
Apple did a masterful job with its physical and online stores to protect their product line from dependence on retailers like Best Buy and e-tailer monopolist Amazon.
Google is investing deeply in its branded hardware products. They are finding that counting on Amazon to help bring them to digital hardware nirvana is a risky proposition.
What is a poor $700 billion company to do? Should they dip into their 100s of billions of dollars in their war-chest to create an Amazon e-commerce competitor?
Ask retail giant Wal-Mart. They will inform you that taking on Amazon in e-commerce is not fun. Google lacks the logistics expertise that has taken Amazon years to perfect. Certainly Google has a nice tool for driving traffic (aka search), but is that enough? Also, would Google advertisers view a Google e-commerce shop as a conflict of interest?
Maybe not.
Manufacturers and service producers would not be impacted by a Google e-commerce store. Only retailers who are already feeling Amazon’s pressure would object to Google adding a major e-commerce presence.
The sale of Kindles drive e-book sales to Amazon. The sale of Android products drive app sales to Google Play. There is little doubt that the devices in a consumer’s home and pocket influence where their digital purchases end up. Amazon failed with its 1st Android phone, but don’t expect them to give up. Rather than fighting a defensive war, Google should consider putting Amazon on defense. There must be plenty of book publishers and electronics manufacturers who would gladly welcome a new e-tail channel for their products.
Google’s Android OS is critically important. Somewhere in his mountain-lair, Jeff Bezos is drumming his fingertips on his desk, plotting a way to outflank Google and introduce a next-gen OS to muscle his way into the duopoly that is Apple and Google. In his e-commerce fortress, the richest man in the world is sitting pretty. Only a lumbering Walmart.com and also-ran eBay dare attempt to climb the seemingly impenetrable e-commerce mountain he has erected.
It would take someone with guts, motivation, resources, money, talent, and a little insanity to try and take on Amazon at the e-commerce game. So Google, are you feeling lucky?
