Google intends to "de-emphasize" its own Froogle shopping search engine, a Web site featuring paid listings from eBay and other online retailers. Google intends for Froogle to no longer be a standalone Web site; instead its listings would be absorbed by other search features, [analyst Robert] Peck wrote.That is sad. I have always liked Froogle and had high hopes for it ([1] [2] [3] [4]), but it has been woefully lacking in attention in the last year or two. Even so, I am surprised Google is deciding to shut Froogle down rather than improve it.
There are several other comparison shopping sites available, including Shopzilla, Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, Smarter.com, and mySimon.
[Found via Paul Kedrosky]
Update: John Battelle pings Google PR and gets the response that "Froogle is alive and well." This may be a denial that Froogle is going to be shut down, but it also could be semantic games with the present versus future tense. Hard to tell.
it will be really strange if GooGle delists froogle. Why r they not improving it ?
ReplyDeletemay be the business prospects or is it the technical glitches ...?
is it the first thing GooGle will pull down from its services ?
I find two ways to interpret this:
ReplyDeleteOne, that Froogle was a pet project of a group of engineers who have since found something more interesting to work on. It seems to be a pattern of Google's to leave stuff in "beta" indefinitely (see gmail) which may be an unfortunate tradeoff from their minimal-management structure.
Two, they have something much bigger in terms of ecommerce up their sleeves.
Time will tell.
I am not a computer geek but I like to froogle thru google-not confusing at all-hope they keepit-what about google earth? I really liked that too.
ReplyDelete