Google still earns a lot of its profits from the search engine, so they have been integrating a lot of additional features into the service recently. One of them is shopping, by searching a particular item, Search will offer a bunch of options to purchase it. That’s not all, the company is now delivering some items from local stores in the same day they were purchased or overnight with their service called Google Express. Basically, it lets users purchase all sorts of products like groceries, health-related products or even toys and clothes from several retailers all in one place. Now, a report from Bloomberg states that Google will expand this service delivering fresh food in two cities on the U.S.
The company will start testing this new service in San Francisco, the other city is still unknown, but the service is expected to launch later this year. Google is teaming up with Whole Foods and Costco at first, but probably they will keep looking for more partnerships as this service takes shape. With the addition of this type of foods Google is literally bringing every product that could be found in a supermarket into the home of its users. This strategy competes directly with the AmazonFresh service which is currently offered in many cities of the U.S.
Delivering fruits and vegetables is not as simple as delivering the other items or even dry food, as the last two categories are usually picked up from warehouses and don’t require refrigeration. Still, Brian Elliott, general manager of Google Express, believes that this move and the added complexity in organization and infrastructure is worth it as customers will have even more choices which will eventually bring more sales and profit for the company. Google will also be expanding its regular service to more cities in the Midwest including Indiana, Wisconsin and Ohio, covering an area with more than 25 million potential customers. Maybe one of the cities in this area will be the other one who gets fresh-food delivery. Who knows, in the future, perhaps Google will adapt some of its self-driving cars to make all sorts of deliveries.