Google Buys Rangespan To Improve Your Online Shopping Experience

Google has been keen to bolster their online shopping initiatives, and a recent acquisition should really ramp up those efforts. Google has purchased Rangespan for an undisclosed amount. The service is a back-end solution for online retailers, which aims to help them stay ahead of shopping trends.

Rangespan will shutter their service, and be enveloped wholly by Google. In a statement, London-based Rangespan had the following to offer on their trip to Mountain View (or perhaps the Zurich office):

We are very happy to announce that Rangespan is joining Google. We will continue to work on services for shoppers and retailers at Google, and we're super excited about the opportunities to come.

As part of the change, we will wind down Rangespan's services. We've already begun working individually with each of our retailers and suppliers on this process.

The team, including former Amazon employees and Rangespan founders Matt Henderson and Ryan Regan, will join the Google shopping team. Google had little to offer on the acquisition, except to say "they'll be joining our Shopping team to help us continue to improve our services for shoppers and retailers".

For online shoppers, this should mean better suggestions and offers when searching via Google. Rangespan's aim was to help retailers forecast what products were needed or desired, which could lead to Google wanting retailers to use them for quantity sales. By providing better metrics on what's selling — or should sell next — retailers can potentially lean on Google to move product for them.

Source: TechCrunch