Google and Walmart have joined forces, announcing on Wednesday that Google would start offering Walmart products to those who shop on Google Express, the company’s online shopping mall. This is the first time that Walmart has made its products available online in the United States outside of its own website.
The partnership is a testament to the mutual threat facing both companies from Amazon’s dominance in online shopping, which continues to challenge brick-and-mortar retailers. For most consumers, Amazon remains the primary option for online shopping as no other retailer can match the size of Amazon’s inventory or its efficiency, so success of the Google Walmart partnership is not ensured.
Google and Walmart said they foresee customers reordering items they purchased in the past by speaking to Google Home, the company’s voice-controlled speaker and answer to Amazon’s Echo. The eventual plan is for Walmart customers to also shop using the Google Assistant, the artificially intelligent software assistant found in smartphones. WalMart customers can link their accounts to Google, allowing the technology giant to learn their past shopping behavior to better predict what they want in the future.
Walmart said last week that its online sales, including online grocery, increased 60 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier. However, Walmart has a long way to go to catch Amazon. Walmart’s website sells 67 million items, up from 10 million early last year. Amazon sells hundreds of millions of items.
