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News out of Europe today that Google is developing new product lines in response to fears that their meteoric online advertising growth is stalling. A new service, Google Base, is being launched to enable traditional retailers to market and sell their goods online. The head of Google's European arm, Nikesh Arora, says that the service involves retail companies submitting details and prices of their goods. Google would then index and package the information into the database of a dedicated search engine, which would, in essence, provide users with a virtual supermarket. According to Mr Arora, the company found through research that many leading European retailers didn’t feel competitive enough online. It’ll be interesting to see if Google can make inroads with this initiative, since many of the world's largest retailers have already invested a ton of money in their own online operations, while Amazon and eBay are far and away the current 800 pound gorillas in the e-commerce platform for retailers space.

Hi... I'm the gorilla guy       from Google!