Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster: Buy Button Good Move For Google, Probable Headwind For Amazon

It was recently reported that search giant Google Inc GOOGL is planning to add ‘buy’ buttons to search results for products on mobile.

Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster was on CNBC Monday to weigh in on this move by Google and to discuss how this can impact Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN.

Shifting Perception

“It’s basically taking friction out of the buying process, that’s the key in e-commerce,” Munster said. “To just make it easier for people to buy, that’s [really] what Google wants to do. And so when you think about Amazon, when you are buying at Amazon that one-click button is powerful. So, by Google being in the first search results, when you have that search page, be able to buy that is going to make it easier for people to use Google for purchasing.”

He continued, “And I will just add this too is people typically think of Google as a search and discovery tool versus an actual e-commerce platform. So, this is going to slightly shift that equation for how people think about Google when they are shopping for things online.”

Good For Google But Probable Headwind For Amazon

Munster was asked if he think that this move by Google in the e-commerce space is a good one. He replied, “It’s a good move for Google, they have nothing to lose. They are really nowhere to be [found] when it comes to true e-commerce. I think, from a consumer standpoint as I mentioned if you look at kind of the collective the buying pool of what items people buy."

“It’s probably about 10 percent of those items that are going to fall within that. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that all 10 percent of those are going to be purchased on Google either and so I think that ultimately Google has nothing to lose, it’s probably a little bit of headwind for Amazon, but a good thing for Google,” Munster said.