This year has been characterised by a clash of the titans so far – with Samsung battling Apple, Android battling iOS and now, according to Reuters, Google is set to defend its search turf against e-commerce giant Amazon.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) elaborated that Google is mulling over plans to launch an internet service which would cater to users’ online shopping needs, promising same day delivery. This apparently, would be intended to mitigate the loss of search engine traffic to Amazon.

The move comes as no surprise, as many consumers tend to visit Amazon and then search for products within the e-commerce site’s vast catalogue – a habit we are well familiar with. The newspaper reported that Google was apparently “in talks” with major retailers.

While neither Amazon or Google have commented on the matter as yet, the WSJ speculated that the internet search giant may also be keeping close watch on Amazon’s Prime service, most particularly in light of the launch of its new Kindle Fire, which is heavily content focused.

 

The paper also quoted Scot Wingo, the chief executive of e-commerce company ChannelAdvisor, who pointed out that Amazon had created a ‘lock-in” that was complemented by the world’s best product search engine. “That's 40% of the internet that Google really can't afford to lose serious share on," he added.

 

While South Africans could be tempted to ask why they should care about Amazon and Google battling for e-commerce supremacy, the reason is simple. Google has showed itself to be very friendly towards and highly cognisant of the South African market.

 

Amazon’s online prices are, almost across the board, extremely competitive. In light of this, Google launching its own competitive online shopping service in the future that offers superb prices to South Africans does not seem like that much of a stretch. If it pans out in the way we hope it could, we think it could offer plenty of reason for shoppers to get very excited.