Heise.de (www.heise.de) announced on November 17 that the Google Deutschland spokesman Stefan Keuchel has confirmed that the search engine giant Google intends to launch a German counterpart to its product search engine Froogle (http://froogle.google.com) in the foreseeable future. Froogle has been in operation as a comprehensive full-text product search engine in the US for two years now. A short while ago Froogle UK (http://froogle.google.co.uk) also took off.
Froogle search results are organized according to a variety of categories and contain apiece an image, the title of the page, the price and a brief description of the product. Froogle is free of charge for users as well as for dealers. Google funds the service through its AdWords advertising program, which, depending on the search term entered, inserts on-screen ads.
The search engine operator is inviting online dealers to upload their product catalogues. Details on how to participate in the program and on how to upload data can be found on the Google Homepage (www.google.com/froogle/merchants/de/welcome). The exact date of when the service is to begin in Germany is not yet known, however.
