Google Is Building A Same-Day Amazon Prime Competitor, “Google Shopping Express”

It's going to take a lot of money, time, hardware and infrastructure to beat Amazon. We're talking about a company that failed to deliver the Nexus 4 to customers resulting in a lot of anger, now multiply that by tens of thousands of different products and you've got a scary situation. It would be in the best interests of Google to acquire a company already innovating in this space, I am not really up-to-date as to what startups actually are that Google could buy though.

Amazon has the space well and truly dominated for now, but I would love to see some competition. Who knows, maybe Google can nail this and give Amazon a run for its money. I think Google has spread themselves far too thin, they've got their fingers in too many pies and I think it's why most of their non-advertising and search efforts end up failing because no matter how big you are it's almost impossible to truly be good at 1000 things as opposed to one or maybe even 3 or so (like Amazon is).

KIVA Systems' robots (http://www.kivasystems.com) revolutionized warehouse automation. Zappos was using KIVA when Amazon acquired Zappos, and then Amazon acquired KIVA for $775 million.

See "Autonomous Robots Invade Retail Warehouses" (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/retailrobots/)

KIVA @ Zappos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdd6sQ8Cbe0

I doubt Amazon is going to permit a contract between KIVA and Google so it will be interesting to see Google's innovations in this space.

"Google Shopping Horror Express" ;)

Well, I hope not. Actually Google Checkout worked fine for me more than once. Not as smooth as Amazon, but it feels much, much better than PayPal, that sneaks up on you and tries to make you pay with your bank account every time.

Still, considering disaster with Nexus 4 delivery dates...