| Operating system | Any (web based application) |
|---|---|
| Type | Price comparison |
| Website | www.google.com/products |
Google Product Search, formerly Google Products and Froogle, is a price comparison service launched by Google Inc. It is currently in beta test stage. It was invented by Craig Nevill-Manning. Its interface provides an HTML form field into which a user can type product queries to return lists of vendors selling a particular product, as well as pricing information. Google Product Search is only available for selected countries[1] at this point.
Google Product Search is different from most other price comparison services in that it neither charges any fees for listings, nor accepts payment for products to show up first. Also, it makes no commission on sales. Any company can submit individual product information via Google Base[2] or can bulk submit items for inclusion.[3] Google sells advertising through AdWords to be displayed in Product Search results adjacent to the unpaid results.
Google formally announced Froogle in December 2002 after the site had been active in beta for some years. It is also offered in Wireless Markup Language (WML) form and can be accessed from mobile phones or other wireless devices that have support for WML.
Google Product Search was originally known as Froogle (wordplay: frugal but constructed like Google's spelling). On April 18, 2007 the product was renamed to Google Product Search. Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search product and user experience explained, "While it was a quite intuitive name, it had issues around copyright and trademark, as well as internationalization… The pun (to 'frugal') isn't obvious."[4]