Google Might be Planning to Turn YouTube Into an E-Commerce Giant

It is not known how YouTube will generate revenue from selling products, but the Bloomberg report says that YouTube has begun offering subscriptions for creators and takes a 30 percent cut from those payments.

Google executives have, for months signaled at YouTube being used as the center of their e-commerce strategy. The Bloomberg report also quoted Google CEO Sundar Pichai as earlier saying that YouTube’s sea of popular product “unboxing” videos could be turned into a massive shopping opportunity. The video site is full of other popular categories, like apparel, automotive, and jewellery.

In July, Google also announced a plan to lure merchants to Google Shopping, its online store, which also included an integration with Shopify. Late last year, YouTube began testing a similar Shopify integration for creators. The tool allowed creators to list as many as 12 items on a carousel below their videos.

Google has not really seen success in the e-commerce sector. The company has instead preferred to sell ads that send people to other stores, not sell the products itself. Further, the COVID-19 pandemic has made things worse, as e-commerce has boomed with people staying home and ordering more products online. Other tech giants like Facebook and Amazon have seen sales soar via their platforms in the past few months and Google has been watching from the sidelines.