Google Mobile Product Search Adds Local Inventory Information

Here’s a scenario for you: you go to Best Buy to find a simple cable to hook-up your television/stereo/PC/etc. After spending 25 minutes searching around for it, you come up with palms. So you ask the first guy in a blue shirt you see. He doesn’t work there, he’s just wearing a blue shirt. You finally find a Best Buy employee and ask about the cable. It’s his first week, he doesn’t even speak electronics language fluently yet, so he goes to check with his manager. After standing around for 9 minutes, he lets you know that they’re all out of stock.

You just wasted 48 minutes looking for a cable that you still don’t have. Balls.

Too bad you didn’t have Google’s updated Product Search for mobile. A new feature allows you to see whether a given product is in stock at participating local stores including Best Buy, Williams Sonoma, Sears, Pottery Barn and West Elm. Perform a product search and you’ll see a blue dot that you can click on to see local availability. So you don’t waste valuable time shopping for products  that aren’t in stock. The service can be accessed from the iPhone, Palm WebOS or Andorid phones at the “shopping” section of Google.com.

While participating retailers are limited now, Google is soliciting other retailer so hopefully it’ll get a little larger in the future. Once again, Google, you’ve made my life that much better. [via Google Mobile Blog]