After expanding Shopping Express to East Coast cities in early May, Google is giving Northern California some love. The company announced on its Google Commerce blog that Berkeley, Concord, Danville, and additional cities will soon have the option of selecting Google-powered overnight delivery on certain items.
Shopping Express, if you will recall, relies on brick-and-mortar retailers like Target, Walgreens, Staples, and Whole Foods to fulfill deliveries. That strategic partnership allows Google to eliminate the costly overhead of warehouses, probably much to Amazon’s chagrin.
Northern California is a rather large region, so Google isn’t expanding availability to every municipality just yet. For the time being, these are the cities that Shopping Express overnight now reaches. More will be added gradually over the next few months.
- Berkeley
- Concord
- Danville
- Dublin
- Fremont
- Oakland
- Pleasanton
- Richmond
- Walnut Creek
Orders placed before 7:00 p.m. will arrive the next day.
Google’s endgame is to attract more eyeballs to its web offerings. Shopping Express is a convenience only available to shoppers who use Google. In the regions where overnight and same-day shipping is available, the search giant has the potential to increase the number of people who rely on Google Search to find products, which translates to more advertising dollars.
Non-members can use the Shopping Express, but a $4.99 delivery fee applies to each order. If you are interested in trying the service, Google’s currently offering a free 6-month trial membership.
Via: Google
This post was last modified on June 3, 2014 3:23 pm