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Enlarge ImageGoogle wants to bring you your groceries.
The search giant on Tuesday confirmed it will test a same-day delivery service for fresh foods later this year. Bloomberg earlier reported the news.
Google will first test the service in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as one other, to-be-named US city. The service, called Google Express, already delivers packaged foods, but this is the first time the company will deliver fresh foods such as fruits and vegetables. Google will partner with chains including Whole Foods and Costco for the delivery service.
The move puts Google in more direct competition with rival Amazon, which has a similar grocery service called AmazonFresh. A number of smaller startups, like Instacart and Good Eggs, also deliver fresh food.
For Google, the expansion is just another example of the search giant’s ambitions to touch every part of consumers’ lives — from delivering their food to chauffeuring them around in driverless cars. Google has particularly been investing in delivery and home services recently. Last month, it tweaked the way it displays results on its search engine to highlight local home-service professionals, such as plumbers or locksmiths.
Google also said Tuesday that it is expanding its next-day delivery service — the one that excludes fresh foods like vegetables — to five more states in the Midwest: Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. It already delivers to Chicago, as well as a handful of other major US locales, including Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Boston.
