Google Acquires Pointy to Help Brick-and-Mortar Retailers Get Their Products Online
https://twitter.comGoogle acquires Pointy, a startup to help brick-and-mortar retailers list products online, for $163M. Pointy surfaces the products that merchants sell directly into the ‘See what’s in store’ section of their business profile on Google Search.
Pointy’s primary product was a piece of hardware that plugged a company’s point of sale/barcode scanning units, so that every time a retailer scanned its products at the point of sale, it would upload the products online (including quantities of those items), and then keep stock numbers up to date with every subsequent purchase that was made and scanned in. Then, a user who might be searching for that product online might come across those details through Google’s search results (“See What’s In Store,” which come up in Google’s Knowledge Panels and on Google Maps), or via advertisements.
The hardware retails for around $700, but Pointy also has a free app that integrates with specific POS devices from Clover, Square, Lightspeed, Vend, Liberty, WooPOS, BestRx and CashRx POS, removing the need for the hardware.