After more than a year of beta-testing, Google has brought its shopping comparison search tool, Froogle, to prime time. Google added the "Froogle" link to its main page Monday morning alongside search options Images, Groups and News.

First introduced in December 2002, Froogle competes with other shopping search engines including Shopping.com, Bizrate and Yahoo Shopping.

What differentiates Froogle from other shopping services is its breadth and depth. Froogle includes items from Internet storefronts, such as TIAS.com, Yahoo! Stores and Vendio as well as auction sites Yahoo Auctions and Bidville. Froogle does not display eBay listings, but an eBay result shows up on the right side of Froogle search results pages under "Sponsored Links."

Many shopping search engines charge merchants to have their items show up in search results. In addition to crawling the Internet for results, Froogle allows online merchants to supply data feeds directly to Froogle to be included in search results - at no charge. As a result, Froogle does a better job picking up listings for antiques and collectibles.

A search for "McCoy Vase" on Shopping.com this morning netted only one item, a print by McCoy. The same search on Yahoo Shopping does a better job, and includes results from Yahoo Auctions and antiques marketplaces: Yahoo Shopping picked up 497 items from 18 stores.

A search for "McCoy Vase" on Froogle came back with about 600 "confirmed" results out of 1,740 "total" results in a standard "List View." Click on "Grid View," and a gallery-style page is displayed with thumbnail photographs of the results, with product title, price and store name underneath. Results can also be sorted by price (high to low or low to high) or narrowed down by price range. The results can also be grouped by store.

The question for merchants is whether consumers will use Froogle to shop. Google likely hopes consumers will think of Froogle when searching for antiques and collectibles and rare items, as well as practicals like digital cameras.

The shopping service competition is one battle in the search engine war, which continues unabated. Yahoo announced on Friday it had signed a definitive agreement under which it will acquire European shopping search engine, Kelkoo, for approximately $575 million. Yahoo also owns Overture, which competes with Google. And rumors abound that Google will file an IPO to take the company public.

http://www.froogle.com