Google Delivery Service Protects Search

You might think a shipping service for online products is directly related to protecting the value of a search business, but that is precisely what Google believes. The problem, in a nutshell, is that Amazon Prime, and perhaps Amazon in general, often becomes the "go to" search engine when people are shopping online.

So Google is in talks with major retailers and shippers to create a service that lets consumers shop for goods on the Web and receive orders within a day for a low fee, all as a way of bolstering the use of Google's search engine for e-commerce activities.

Amazon's growth has surged in recent years with the help of a service called Prime that allows people to receive many items they order from the site in a day or two for a $79 annual fee, analysts say. Google, Retailers in Fast-Delivery Talks

For Google, the issue is that when users bypass Google's search engine and go straight to Amazon, Google's advertising model is threatened.