Irreverent Rants

2012-12-18

by Darknut

Not So Froogle

Google no longer lists stuff for sale on Amazon, nor many other stores. It was pretty obvious when they made this change right in the middle of the Giftsmas season. I'm trying to compare prices, but Google isn't useful for that any more since stores now have to pay to appear in Google shopping results. The prices displayed on Google shopping are now ridiculous compared to the stores they aren't showing any more.

Wait, actually Amazon stuff still shows up if you do a normal search, but then it's absent if you do a shopping search. Ingenious⸮

I guess they feel sorry for their competitors, and they want to give people a free business opportunity. Seems strange when sites like Bing are already lined up to replace them. Maybe Google is super confident that Microsoft won't get their act together for at least 10 years (based on the way they develop their web browser).

Update: Google added a message to their shopping results sort of apologizing for being assholes, but not really.

Also they hid the ability to sort the results. That's an "advanced search" feature now, even though I sort the results every single time I do a shopping search. Fuck you, too, Google.

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