Google Fights to Unseat Amazon as the Top Online Mall
Whether you are looking to buy a power tool or neon jeans online, chances are you start your search on Google or Amazon.com. But which one?
不管你是想在网上买个电动工具，还是彩色牛仔裤，你很可能会用谷歌(Google)或亚马逊(Amazon.com)开始搜索。不过，到底用哪一个呢？
Behind the scenes, the two companies are waging a war to become the pre-eminent online mall. And e-commerce sites large and small are caught in the cross-fire. As for consumers, the question is whether they will see a full range of products available online.
为了成为顶尖网络商城，这两家公司在私底下开始了一场较量。大大小小的电子商务网站都卷入了双方的战火。对于消费者来说，最重要的是，他们能否在网上看到品种齐全的商品。
Google is a search engine, not a store, but it is increasingly inching into e-commerce with products like its comparison-shopping service, Google Shopping. At the same time, more people are using Amazon, a retailer, as a search engine to look for what they want to buy.
虽然谷歌是搜索引擎，而不是网店，但是它依靠自己的对比购物服务平台谷歌购物(Google Shopping) 之类的产品，正在逐渐朝电子商务领域进军。与此同时，用网络零售商亚马逊作为搜索引擎来搜索自己想购买商品的人越来越多。
Trying to stave off the competition from Amazon, Google has recently changed Google Shopping to require e-commerce companies to pay to be included in shopping results, so product listings are now ads. Inclusion used to be free. If a company does not pay to be listed, consumers will not see what they have to offer.
为了回避亚马逊的冲击，谷歌最近对谷歌购物做了一些更改，开始要求那些想出现在与购物相关的搜索结果中的电子商务网站公司支付费用。所以，现在的产品清单就是广告。出现在搜索结果中曾经是免费的。现在，如果某家公司不为此付费，消费者就无法看到他们的产品信息。
Google says the change will improve its shopping results because retailers are more likely to list accurate and up-to-date items if they are paying. It says the service had become polluted with product listings that were out of date or misled consumers about things like shipping prices.
谷歌表示，这项改变将会提高与购物相关的搜索结果的质量，因为如果付费的话，零售商会更倾向于把精确的、最新的产品罗列出来。它还说，那些过时的或是在配送价格等方面对消费者产生了误导的产品信息，对搜索服务造成了污染。
By requiring retailers to pay for listings, “incentives are aligned to make sure the data we’re receiving is of a higher quality,” said Sameer Samat, vice president for product management for Google Shopping, which used to be called Google Product Search and, before that, Froogle. “With better data, we can build a better experience for users.”
通过要求零售商为在搜索结果中出现而付费，“各种激励因素共同确保了我们所得到的数据质量更高，”谷歌购物的产品管理副总裁萨米尔·萨马特(Sameer Samat)说。谷歌购物曾叫做谷歌产品搜索(Google Product Search)，而更久之前则叫做Froogle。“有了质量更高的数据，我们就能为用户创造更好的体验。”
