Froogle launch critiques

Some healthy intramural mind-butting going on at Marketing Fix.

Robert Loch raves about Google’s new shopping interface (called Froogle!). Olivier Travers reviews Froogle’s taxonomies and pronounces them DOA. “Maybe throwing Nuclear Physics PhDs at an online retail/merchandising issue is not such a bright idea. People at Amazon and eBay will see this and feel very comfortable,” he says. He concludes: “there’s no vacuum to fill in like Google did in web search.”

I agree with Robert, who counters: “How can you say that there is no ‘vacuum to fill’ ?!? I’m guessing that Google has worked out [there’s] a hell of a vaccum to fill, by noting how much people use Google search to search for products and services…. I bet if you had access to Google’s full search data you’d find a black hole, never mind a vacuum.”