Google and Walmart Partner With Eye on Amazon<br />The two companies said Google would start offering Walmart products to people who shop on Google Express, the company’s online shopping mall.<br />Walmart said last week that its online sales — including online grocery — increased 60 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier.<br />Amazon’s dominance in online shopping is challenging brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart, while<br />more people are starting web searches for products they might buy on Amazon instead of Google.<br />In January, Walmart began offering free, two-day shipping on more than two million items — a move<br />that takes direct aim at Amazon Prime, whose members who pay an annual fee for fast shipping and other services like movie streaming.<br />Google said it planned to offer free delivery — as long as shoppers met store purchase minimums — on products purchased on Google Express.<br />They said that they foresaw Walmart customers reordering items they purchased in the past by speaking<br />to Google Home, the company’s voice-controlled speaker and an answer to Amazon’s Echo.
