Google wants shoppers to think of its search engine as the entire mall, rather than just the directory.
Google is trying to get people to think of Google Product Search as a shopping destination, but it has a long way to go.
(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)Millions of people already use Google as a resource when getting ready to buy something, whether that's to double-check their instincts against professional or user reviews, compare prices across different retailers, or figure out whether it will fit in that spot under the window. This search category is an essential part of Google's oft-stated mission to organize the world's information and one that makes it quite a bit of money: product-related search results pages are clustered with ads.
But one thing Google doesn't do very well is provide the shopping-as-adventure experience that fills real-world malls and shopping Web sites like Amazon on a daily basis. You might go to the mall with a specific product in mind, but a well-designed mall or department store forces you to discover--and hopefully purchase--other products that you might not have even known you wanted: the marketing types like to call this "serendipity."
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