Google Takes Yet Another Run at E-Commerce—and Amazon

The search giant abandoned plans to mimic the Seattle-based leviathan and has reset its shopping strategy around search and ads.
ByMark Bergen

Google executive Prabhakar Raghavan recently had an issue with his rose bushes. His wife took a photo of the plants on her phone, uploaded the image to Google, identified the culprit and followed a link for a fungicide. Then she bought it.

A seamless transaction that didn’t involve typing into a search bar, it was a real-life test of sorts for Raghavan’s strategic vision. A senior vice president responsible for most of Google’s largest services—search, maps, advertising and more—the 61-year-old executive is determined to crack e-commerce, a market projected to hit $2.27 trillion in 2025 that the Alphabet Inc. division has tried and failed to figure out many times before.

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Google brought in consultants from BCG to assess a specific e-commerce strategy, but didn’t follow the firm’s recommendations. The company shortened the delivery service’s name (to just Express) and revamped it to center on its digital voice-assistant, another Amazon competitor. That effort fizzled, too. “For the past 15 years, Google has been trying to figure out commerce,” said Rick Watson, the head of RMW Commerce Consulting. “And they’ve never really executed.”

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