Google Buys E-Commerce Company to Improve Shopping Search - NYTimes.com

(Google Shopping)*2

"The acquisition is Google’s latest effort to take on Amazon.com, which has become an archrival in shopping search. A third of shoppers start their searches on Amazon, compared with just 13 percent on a search engine, according to Forrester Research. That’s a shift from several years ago, when a quarter started shopping research on a search engine and 18 percent on Amazon.
It is also the latest example of Google’s moves into building vertical search engines for searching certain topics, like local businesses, flights or shopping. Google’s stiffest competition has come from these types of businesses, like Yelp, Kayak and Shopping.com."

Google Buys E-Commerce Company to Improve Shopping Search - NYTimes.com