The Holidays seem to come with the biggest hunger for dough from Google, who's been trying to promote its service for online shopping harder and harder. When Froogle didn't turn out exactly what they wanted it to be, they worked on it and re-branded it "Product Search". Apparently, this is not really appealing to shoppers everywhere, so they've decided to change things once again and, now, the link on the Google homepage reads "Shopping", perhaps that'll be easier to understand for everybody.

This latest attempt to drum up traffic looks like a desperate cry for money, in my opinion, because proper management of the product (which hasn't changed, by the way, it's still the "old" Product Search) would have worked wonders. As long as they can't force it down users' throats, they try to make it more visible in the navigational bar… There are better ways to go about that, I'm certain of it.

The whole string of names that the service has gone through is Froogle ---> Google Base ---> Google Product Search ---> Google Shopping. What next, "Google Shop Using This Or I'm Going To Reveal Publicly Information About You?" They could do that, they have the means, but I'm wandering if it wouldn't be too long a link for the bar.

In case it's not all that clear for you what it's all about, Wikipedia has the answer: "Google Product Search (formerly known as Froogle) is a price comparison service launched by Google Inc. It is currently in beta test stage. It was invented by Craig Nevill-Manning. Its interface provides an HTML form field into which a user can type product queries to return lists of vendors selling a particular product, as well as pricing information.

Google Product Search is different from most other price comparison services in that it neither charges any fees for listings, nor accepts payment for products to show up first. Also, it makes no commission on sales. Any company can submit individual product information via Google Base or can bulk submit items for inclusion. Notably, advertising space is available for purchase to be displayed in Product Search in the form of an AdWords ad, similar to those in other parts of the Google network. This is, as elsewhere, noticeably separate from the main body of results."

Is it going to be updated to be "Google Shopping (formerly known as Google Product Search, formerly known as Froogle)"? I don't know, but this starts to remind me of the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince.