• NY Times, Wednesday, November 23, 2005 11 AM

Google has added a feature to its largely unsuccessful Froogle comparison shopping service that lets merchants provide local shopping information. Besides contact, location and mapping information, the service now also provides up-to-the-minute inventory updates, so users would know ahead of time if a retailer currently carries the item they're searching for. Google is licensing the inventory data from an unnamed third party. Executives and analysts agreed that the service would be useful for bulky items users would rather not have shipped to them. Local postings on the Froogle site will be free to retailers; Google plans to monetize the service the same way it does its other services: via relevant pay-per-click text ads lining the right-hand side.

Read the whole story at NY Times »