Walmart has abandoned Google Express dealing what is likely to be a fatal blow to Google’s attempt to challenge Amazon in the one place where its’ performance is inferior in the smart home.
There has been no formal announcement, but Google Express has admitted on Twitter that Walmart is no longer on its website. This is not a result of a sudden souring of the relationship between Google and Walmart but more about Walmart not seeing meaningful volume from Google Express, leading it to prioritise its own website and delivery infrastructure. While Google’s has not necessarily done anything wrong, this speaks volume to the success or lack thereof of Google Express.
Google Express is an attempt by Google to address the one real weak spot that its Google Assistant has: shopping. In the Google Assistant vs. Alexa face-off, this is the one area where Amazon beats Google hands-down. For those with an Amazon account (over 250m) ordering almost anything with voice is dead easy compared to Google’s messy (and now reduced) patchwork of partners where the range is far more limited. However, everywhere else in the smart home, Google Assistant outperforms Amazon by the nature of its superior intelligence and the fact that most 3rd party products now support it. Given that Amazon offers the Amazon Dash wand version of the Alexa for free to its Prime subscribers, there is no reason why these households could not use Alexa for shopping and Google for everything else.
Unfortunately for Google, the last 12 months have been very disappointing as Google market share gains on Amazon have stalled despite a huge marketing effort and having the better product. This leads one to wonder whether we are in fact seeing a repeat of JVC vs Betamax war where the inferior product won out at the end of the day. One's optimism that Google will eventually win the smart home is starting to flag.
