Still waiting for the Googlezon

Back in 2004, there was an eight minute video (written by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson) that among other things claimed that 2008 was the year that Google merged with Amazon forming Googlezon. As someone who loves Amazon and its Prime service, I thought this was a pretty nifty idea.

First off, if you haven’t watched the video, go do so. It is an amusing bit. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
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Now then, the only part of the video I will be discussing is Googlezon.

Currently, Google Checkout is a great payment method that offers a bit more protection than just using your credit card or even Paypal. Similarly, there is Amazon Payments, though I don’t know as much about that, and I don’t recall ever having used it; presumably it offers a similar function, allowing you to use your Amazon credentials to purchase things.

Additionally, there are a number of “Fulfilled by Amazon” merchants (something that will be the topic of another post at some point) that are what Jon and I refer to as “Prime-able”, meaning that shipping is free (as well as being 2-Day) and has all the other benefits of Prime. The number of these merchants seems to be increasing (based purely on my own experiences).

I could see Googlezon increasing the number of these merchants, slowly at first (as Amazon has), then moving more rapidly. Eventually, there would be more “Fulfilled by Googlezon” merchants than not, which means that for the most part, we (that is the users of AmazonGooglezon Prime) would be receiving their goods and services fast and at no additional cost.
This reminds me of the 90s; before the bubble burst certain areas were able to order a candy bar online and get it shipped to them for the price of a candy bar. I’d love to be able to buy everything online. I remember watching The Net and thinking how cool it would be to order a pizza online and get it delivered 30 minutes later. Certain pizza chains let you do that now, but not in all areas; we need to be able to have 90-100% market penetration before it becomes a standard, before it becomes the standard.

I guess what I am really trying to say is, I’m still waiting for the Googlezon.