Amazon and Google announced plans to add to their same-day and overnight delivery services catering to online shoppers wth short timeframes. Jeanne Yurman reports.
The frenzy to capture a slice of the quick delivery market for online shopping keeps growing. Tuesday Amazon Prime Now said, it's launching a one-hour restaurant delivery service to compete with sites like GrubHub. And Google Express expanded its overnight delivery service to include midwestern cities, like Columbus, Ohio and Lansing, Michigan. Google trails Amazon Prime Now, the leader in same and next-day delivery service, but it's still in its early stages, says General Manager Brian Elliott. SOUNDBITE: BRIAN ELLIOTT, GENERAL MANAGER, GOOGLE EXPRESS (ENGLISH) SAYING: "What we're now doing is trying to figure out how do we expand this, and how do we do this, so, in ways, that, actually get, you know, more merchants to more users efficiently, economically, and with a service level that we'd expect." The same-day delivery market is projected to explode with the value of goods sold jumping nearly six-fold from last year to $620 million. An attractive sector, but with high labor costs, an expensive business. eBay learned this first-hand and shut down its quick delivery unit eBay Now in July this year. Yet many players remain undeterred. Uber's UberRUSH, start ups Deliv and Shutl, and even Macy's are some of the latest names eager to address shoppers with short time frames.