The initiative is a direct rebuttal to Alexa, Amazon's popular artificial intelligence program, and comes as the online retailer prepared to swallow Whole Foods Market in a transaction that will exponentially expand Amazon's presence in brick-and-mortar stores and is expected to lead to home delivery of food through Amazon's subscription prime program.
On Wednesday, Whole Foods shareholders voted to support the $13.7 billion takeover by Amazon. Scott Kessler, a CFRA analyst who covers Google parent Alphabet, said the announcement made sense for both companies, filling in a gap in Wal-Mart's technology profile with the addition of voice-ordering capacity and potentially boosting Google's standing in e-commerce. "What seems to be happening is a lot of the companies are coming together to offer an alternative to Amazon and this is one example of that," Kessler told AFP in an interview.
Wal-Mart Stores head of e-commerce Marc Lore said the initiative will permit customers to voice order hundreds of thousands of items beginning in late September. Wal-Mart plans to integrate its "easy reorder" service into the program, which allows customers to repeat orders of household staples and other frequent purchases with a few fast clicks.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2017