A VC in Vacationland

Image via CrunchBase

Google wants to do to physical
goods what it does with information: Get it to you fast.

To that end, Google is working on
a same-day shipping service dubbed ”Google Shipping Express, which will
compete with services like Amazon Prime and eBay Now, TechCrunch reports.

Besides being a data problem,
same-day shipping is a much larger infrastructure problem. How can Google
possibly match the network of shipping centers that Amazon has already built
up? The key, TechCrunch’s sources say, are local Target, Wal-Mart, and
Safeway stores, which would essentially serve as Google’s own
distribution centers (as vague and outlandish as that sounds).

There was once a time when I
would have been surprised to hear that Google is working on a same-day shipping
service — “Why would an information company care about shipping speed?”– but
that time is long gone. This is a company that’s working on self-driving cars
and wearable computers, after all. Nothing Google does surprises me much
anymore.

But I’m thinking same-day
shipping won’t be enough for Google, a company that repeatedly stresses that
its goal is to get you information before
you want it, not as you want it. “When we started Google 15 years ago, my
vision was that information would come to you as you need it. You wouldn’t have
to search query at all,” Sergey Brin said just last week .

While same-day delivery obviously
fits in with the Google of today, it’s not particularly tough to envision a
future iteration of the program that would ship you things before you need them.
“Pre-day shipping” would solve all the problems of shopping online that we
didn’t know we had. Make it happen, Google.