Going by the new hiring of Stephanie Tilenius as a "vice president of commerce" it looks like that way.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/google-hires-ebay-veteran-for-new-commerce-position/
A lot of sale for Amazon anyways happen by going through Google.
http://googlewatch.eweek.com/content/googleopoly/is_google_gunning_for_e-commerce_giants_amazon_ebay.html
So with kind of varied things Google has been able to produce over the years I am not sure if "surprise" as a word is relevant for them in the web world. As Eric Schmidt said ..wants a small google in everything thats on the web.
I don't know if this is something especially wise for Google. They run a decided risk of overstretching and collapsing in on themselves (or getting hit with Microft-style anti-trust suits)
ReplyDeleteAmazon is the clear dominant player in this industry so perhaps it is a batter of strengthening partnerships instead of trying to take over the segment for themselves.
Where they have the edge over Amazon at the moment seems to be in platform developer services, which also seems to me to be a more natural expansion of Google's current offerings.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=166
This field would be an ideal place for them to capture share from Amazon (and could possibly offer a more logical leap to direct ecommerce through the creation of ebay-like services for users)