Google bridges online/physical retail divide with Pointy deal

Google’s acquisition of Pointy, announced earlier this week, is a significant step for the search engine giant, according to GlobalData.

The Irish startup helps people find out what their local stores have in stock. “For Google, this provides the opportunity to present shopping search results for physical stores as well as those online – something it already does in a limited capacity – and so significantly increase the value of Google Shopping for users,” says GlobalData’s Lucy Ingham.

“However, while this is a significant step in bridging the divide between bricks and mortar stores and the e-commerce world, the acquisition has the potential to be even more impactful. It provides Google with a way to cheaply and easily catalogue physical assets on a large, yet decentralised scale,” she adds.

Shopping is the leading use case and Google will likely be looking at ways to expand the adoption of Pointy. This may include dropping or reducing the current one-time cost of £699 to integrate Pointy, or even getting leading Point of Sale manufacturers to directly integrate the technology into their products.

“If Google can increase the prevalence of Pointy enough, it could ultimately have coverage of physical stores to rival those of digital stores, bringing with it a potential step-change in how people shop,” Ingham says.

There are also potential applications beyond e-commerce. What Google has bought, in essence, is a means to catalogue real-world items, and the same technology in the Pointy Box could be put to use in many other fields. This could include medicines, enabling Google to collect data on gluts and shortages of particular items and use this to provide industry-targeted services, inform users or even assist its own moves into the healthcare space.