[libstripper]

Whenever I want to buy a large, expensive consumer product, I go go Google and enter the product's name. You immediately get links to every on line seller and lists of the best deals. At the beginning of this year I purchased a 73" Mitsubishi HD TV for a base price of $3,380 and a delivered price (NJ to Knoxville, TN) of $4,820. That's a lot less than I would have paid for a 50" plasma screen here, let alone what I bought. Anyone who wants to get really good deals on consumer electronics should use Google as a starting point.

[Crazieman]

Used Google to get a 1280x720 HD LCD projector for a delivered price of $1960

[summer]

I agree. Thanks for your post.

[PUGACHEV]

I do that also: that is, I check Google for prices before making any large purchase. Often, I first enter the product name followed by the word review before making a decision about what specific product to purchase. The only trouble is, that I am directed to the same few websites time and again for both prices and reviews. This makes me wonder if Google isn't capeable of being being manipulated in some way that will, in fact, limit cometition.

[Proud_texan]

"and lists of the best deals"

Therein lies the fly in the ointment. As Google is used for about 90% of searches if it elects to discard certain sites it can leave one with incomplete information. Because the web is so big it could be done without anyone really noticing or it could be that a particular site has been "Google bowled" and thus delisted, who knows? Were I WalMart or any large company part of the concern would be "what if I'm excluded, period?".

Yeah, it sounds like black helicopter stuff but the problem is when any organization dominates it can tend to pick winners and losers, even if they don't intent do.

I'm certainly not suggesting that there's any need for goobermint to get involved but I think a prudent approach is to use several search engines or perhaps a search engine of search engine like search.com or even one that's truly innovative like vivisimo.com.

Not that I'm gonna put a dent in Google's bidness....

[rbg81]

There are many ways to do comparison shopping on the Internet (and have been for some time)--Google is just one of them. The real questions is: which is best? The answer is probably: "it depends".

[appeal2]

Whenever I am buying anything for over a hundred bucks, I start out at ebay. I review the current auctions and then go to the completed auctions and see what the item went for. Then its off to the shopping engines of which Google's service, Froogle, is just one. You can do your straight Google searches for a product, but I find the shopping sites to be more efficient and the information is formatted in such a way that makes it easier to absorb.

However, I can see the day coming where Google supplants the shopping engines. With a little fine tuning and the ability to filter out unwanted responsed easier, Google will become the last word.

[octobersky]

You immediately get links to every on line seller and lists of the best deals.

Oh absolutely and not just that. You can often find product reviews where you can read the opinions and experiences of people who have already purchased the item you are looking for. Google groups is sometimes good for this.

[dennisw]

Try froogle for prices.