Google Goes For Groceries

In an effort to ramp up its presence in e-commerce, Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOG) Google expanded its online shopping offerings to include perishable goods like produce and meat in certain pars of California. Google's foray into online grocery shopping began on Wednesday as part of the firm's Google Express offering— which delivers items to customers within hours of their order. CompetitionOnline grocery shopping is already a crowded field, especially in big cities where parking and driving to the store is a hassle. Companies like Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and grocers like Safeway Inc. (NYSE: SWY) already offer such a service and it might be tricky for Google to break into the market. Google Takes A Different ApproachHowever, the internet search engine is setting up its own grocery delivery service in a different way than its competitors. Rather than maintaining food storage warehouses, Google is using existing partnerships from its Google Express service in order to fill grocery orders. That means that instead of managing its own inventory and worrying about food wastage, Google will leave that up to its partners Costco Wholesale Corp. (NASDAQ: COST) and Whole Foods Market (NYSE: WFM). Instead, Google will manage the ordering and delivery side of the transaction.Google ExpressIn order to accommodate the delivery of perishable goods, Google has had to make some changes to its Express service like lowering delivery times and increasing minimum order costs. The addition of grocery delivery options could help Google expand its Express offering by drawing in more customers. The service has hit a few stumbling blocks since its inception, but despite that Google has begun expanding the service to include most of the Midwest as well as California.