Google, with its intelligent speaker, and Walmart, with its wide array of goods, are reportedly teaming up to make shopping easier, but more importantly to combat Amazon and its diverse services.
Using the Google Home device, prospective customers can browse and shop for items from Walmart with just their voice, according to Recode. Google made a similar deal with other big name retailers, like Walgreens, PetSmart, and Costco, earlier in 2017.
“When it comes to voice shopping, we want to make it as easy as possible for our customers. That’s why it makes sense for us to team up with Google,” Marc Lore, CEO of Walmart’s e-commerce division, said in a statement. “They’ve made significant investments in natural language processing and artificial intelligence to deliver a powerful voice shopping experience.”
The partnership between the two massive conglomerates further signals a swelling war between the various corporal giants in the U.S. Amazon and Walmart in particular have been dueling in recent months and years, as Amazon gradually encroaches on Walmart’s grocery business territory.
Amazon’s goal is to open 2,000 grocery stores within the upcoming decade, and 20 in the next two years, according to Business Insider. It was recently granted a patent titled “Physical Store Online Shopping Control,” further showing its seriousness of developing brick-and-mortar locations. The tech company also has AmazonFresh, a grocery delivery business that seems to be cultivating a decent stake in the nascent, but budding industry.
Walmart notified tech companies in June that they aren’t allowed to run apps through Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing subsidiary. Walmart uses tech suppliers’ apps that run on AWS, but has tried to convince them to use another service. (RELATED: Walmart Wants To Satisfy Customers By Scanning Their Faces)
“It shouldn’t be a big surprise,” a Walmart representative told The Wall Street Journal, “that there are cases in which we’d prefer our most sensitive data isn’t sitting on a competitor’s platform.”
Walmart announced Monday that it is partnering with Uber to help deliver groceries to people directly, an apparent attempt to not only increase its distribution capabilities, but also keep pace with Amazon which has both a well-established supply chain system, and a growing grocery initiative. Amazon has its own version of Google Home called Echo, which has a personal voice-assistant named Alexa embedded. Amazon can reap duel benefits of people’s patronage, both through its Echo, and the purchasing of items from it’s e-commerce platform.
“We know this means being compared side-by-side with other retailers, and we think that’s the way it should be,” Lore continued. “An open and transparent shopping universe is good for customers.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to Google and Amazon for comment as well, but neither responded in time for publication.
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