Google’s annual Great Online Shopping Festival: Curtains down

In the year 2014, Google’s Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) was the most preferred online shopping event according to CashKaro’s ‘People’s Choice survey’.

As the year 2015 is nearing its end, we are informed that Google is shutting down its annual shopping event.

Bye-bye GOSF

Nitin Bawankule, Director – Ecommerce, Local & Classifieds at Google India informed everyone about this decision through his blog-post – Bidding Adieu to Great Online Shopping Festival.

He wrote, “The pace of growth and the impact eCommerce companies are driving in India has gained significant momentum and we are very pleased that we were able to play our part in this journey in India. GOSF in many ways was a catalyst in boosting consumer confidence to shop online… There were many learnings for us and the Industry on the whole but the time has come for us to bid adieu to the Great Online Shopping Festival.”

What prompted this decision?

One of the reasons is said to be that GOSF is no longer a rare online shopping festival.

When GOSF entered the Indian ecommerce scene in 2012, there weren’t many online shopping events unlike these days. It was an exclusive event, but not anymore. Today we have Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal, eBay and other ecommerce sites pulling off successful sales independently throughout the year.

“Today, India has many flourishing and successful eCommerce companies and there are multiple deal days being hosted by various e-Commerce players delivering great value to shoppers across India. Users don’t have to wait for 12 months to get the best deals online, small and medium businesses no longer have to wait for www.gosf.in to find customers from all across India. Success of new categories introduced in GOSF like Real Estate and Auto have today become a norm, and both industries have embraced Internet to sell directly customers”, explained Bawankule.

Existing ecommerce leaders snub GOSF

As mentioned in the beginning of the article, GOSF was the most popular shopping event in 2014 and also a very profitable one. The number of retailers joining GOSF kept growing with each year, so did the traffic. Therefore, it wouldn’t have been hard to repeat the same success in 2015.

But GOSF’s format demands all etailers to unite and offer deals on the same platform. With the competition getting intense between existing ecommerce leaders like Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal, uniting was not possible, hence the snub. Flipkart had already refused to participate last year. And rumour has it that this year, other players also refused to be a part of it.

Future plans

Although, Google is shutting down its annual festival, the company will continue to help SMEs.

Bawankule said, “In addition to helping large eCommerce players get massive transactions, GOSF served as a great platform for hundreds of small and medium businesses to find customers across India. Many small and medium eCommerce portals used GOSF as a launch platform and saw phenomenal growth in sales and some of them today are well established online shopping destinations.”

He added, “We will continue to invest in initiatives to empower small and medium businesses and work along with the Industry to make Internet a growth engine for the country.”