Scenario 3: Google becomes leader in online sales services

2006

The influence of ‘the internet’ was changing the environment of people more and more towards a digital life. People and businesses got extremely depending on services like e-mail, online banking, online shopping, etc. In this new digital world, Google was one of the biggest online players and was the best known internet search engine in the world. Google did not only concentrate on improvements in search capabilities, but focussed on related services as well. There where lots of applications provided by Google like the e-mail service ‘G-mail’ and the extremely popular advertisement service ‘Google-ads’. All digital movements of people via Google services were tracked and profiles where created in order to provide ‘personalized advertising features’ in the near future. In the mean time Google worked on a beta version of the normal search engine called ‘Froogle’ which focused only on searching in web shops.

2007

During the year 2007, the final version of the new search engine Froogle is ready and launched. Because of the digitalisation of people’s life, online shops where very hot and Froogle became a big success. It became the biggest online shopping medium in the world that brought demand and supply together. Google offered standard online web shops, called ‘Froogle shops’, which companies could personalize to their own wishes and where designed to integrate with froogle in order to establish optimal search results. Froogle shops made it possible for not very well known companies to ‘be alive’ in the world of online shops. During the introduction of Google in China, Google had to follow certain constraints regarding political issues which started a world wide discussion on ‘online privacy issues’. These discussions led to a new international law that set limitations to the collection of users’ data. Google had to delete many users’ data and had to eliminate the developments on the ‘personal advertising features’.

2008

Google’s search engine was still popular but the focus shifted more towards Froogle. Due to the big success of Froogle shops, Google introduced G-pay. G-pay is a payment system that was integrated in the Froogle shops and compatible with other web shops. The simplicity, usability and safety of G-pay in combination with the integrating of Google Ads in Froogle, boosted Froogle to number one of most used online shopping websites. Google became an expert in online shopping and invested in new features that would give the end users an optimal shopping experience.

2009

In 2009, the mobile telephone industry had expanded their capacity in such a way that almost everywhere in the world people had access to wireless internet at a reasonable speed. Because of competition wars, the connection was available for free for the end-user. This ‘wireless world’ made it possible for Google to introduce their developed shopping features that bundled the positive parts of ‘online shops’ and ‘physical stores’ together. For example, people could have physical contact with salesman of virtual stores by use of webcams in their mobile devices and shop anywhere-anytime. Froogle became the provider for additional web shop features that companies could integrate in their own (Froogle) online shop for a monthly fee. This generated enormous revenues for Google which they invested in the development and optimisation of the Google features to make sure they beat upcoming competition.

2010

The shopping behaviour of people was totally changed towards ‘online shopping’ and the need was there to have everything you can think of, available on line. The biggest problem of online shopping was still the shipment of the products against a reasonable price. This was especially the case with small products and therefore those where still bought at the local physical stores. While Google was connecting all web shops together with Froogle and additionally features, more and more shops implemented G-pay as a payment service. The amount of sales made via G-pay grew enormously and Google introduced a new shipping concept ‘G-shipment’. By operating as a broker/planning service between web shops and distribution companies, Google established contracts that reduced the shipment cost dramatically by using his economy of scale. Google was optimising the shipment of products sold online and reducing shipment cost for the end-user. Google is the most successful company in the world by providing online services without physical products.