The much awaited, the much talked about GOSF or The Great Online Shopping Festival conducted by Google will not make its appearance in 2015… Google has killed it!
The GOSF was started by Google to bring shopping days like Cyber Monday or Black Friday during which consumer consumers could get hands on some awesome deals from various eCommerce sites. After 3 years of mixed success, GOSF is finally dead!
Why Did Google Shut Down GOSF?
When Google started GOSF in 2012, there were no shopping festivals like we have so often today. Their objective was to bring all the leading ecommerce players on a common platform and boost the online shopping industry by focusing on first time buyers.
GOSF definitely helped bring hundreds of thousands of new online shoppers – In 2012, only about 8 million people shopped online with total online shopping Industry being approximately $2 billion. In 3 years, there has been a sea change – In 2015, India has over 350 million Internet users and over 50 million online shoppers projected to reach 100 million by 2016 and the Industry is already over $10 Billion.
So, GOSF has achieved what it set out to do!
3 years of Great Online Shopping Festival
Although GOSF 2012 generated huge excitement, it was a super flop. In fact, we called it “The Great Online Shopping Farce” – the deals promised were not available. The site went down as soon as soon as the festival started. After the site came back live, consumers could not find a single deal, where they could say ‘WOW’.
However, GOSF 2012 started a trend which caught the imagination of a billion Indians.
GOSF 2013 edition was much improved one – it was also converted into a 3 day event, rather than a single day event. While the GOSF site went down again during the festival, this time around the festival did have some good deals. In the first edition around 100 e-tailers had participated, which grew to 250 etailers in 2013.
GOSF 2014 improved further and this time over 550 retailers participated in the event. Surprisingly real estate deals were most sought after by consumers during this festival. Close to 15 million people visited GOSF 2014 website which was 7 times higher than in GOSF 2013.
In an official blog post, Nitin Bawankule, Industry Director – eCommerce, Local & Classified, Google India said “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.”
Good Bye GOSF! You did a great job!
