Froogle
Froogle is a price engine website launched by Google Inc. It is
currently in beta test stage. 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. The name
Froogle is a portmanteau of the word frugal, which means thrifty, and
the name of the company, Google. Froogle is, of course, pronounced the
same as frugal.
Froogle's main page
Froogle is different from most other price engines 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 product
information (via a "data feed") and be included in the Froogle engine.
Notably, advertising space is available for purchase to be displayed in
Froogle 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.
Searches can be sorted by relevance ("Best
match") or by price (either ascending or descending). You can also
search for items in specific online stores
(assuming, of course, they have provided Froogle a data feed). Froogle is
only available for selected countries at this point.
Google formally announced Froogle in December 2003, after the site had been
active in beta for some years. It is now also offered in Wireless Markup
Language (WML) form and can be accessed from cellphones or other wireless
devices that have support for WML.
External links
|