Froogle: Shopping Made Complex

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Yet, despite my certainty that you could find Ugg boots at the nearby Stanford Shopping Center, among many other places, Froogle turned up no results.

Perhaps local merchants didn't list their wares online or in the right way, or none provided product feeds to Froogle. To be fair, Shopping.com didn't turn up any useful results either -- no surprise, given that it doesn't appear to have a local feature.

A Froogle search for "pashmina shawl near San Francisco" turned up a much more relevant list of stores, almost all in the city, with product descriptions, addresses, and phone numbers under each store. Still some misses, though: Pashmina shawls may be soft, but one listing, Software Research, certainly doesn't sell apparel. (Do those Google guys think about anything but tech?)

GENERIC KITS.

Nonetheless, these local listings underscore a cool and unique feature of Froogle: The listings are accompanied by a Google Map with numbered pushpins showing where the stores are located, from which you can click on directions. This is useful for finding those products you need immediately.

Beyond that whizzy feature, Froogle managed to outdo the competition on some product searches. I searched for "Lego town set," for instance, hoping to find generic kits that my daughter could build into a wide variety of buildings.

On Shopping.com, I got a list of only nine products, not all of which were what I was looking for, and on Amazon.com (AMZN), I got no results at all. On Froogle, I got 371 results -- again, not all precisely what I wanted, but more relevant than those from Shopping.com.

WORK IN PROGRESS.

So, generally, it appears that if you're adept at searching on Google -- that is, by using the right keywords to zero in on what you're looking for -- you may do better on Froogle, too. That bodes well for the time when Google inevitably will attract more listings from more stores interested in getting the widest possible exposure to potential customers.

Most of Froogle's other capabilities aren't unique, but they're nonetheless a nice touch. I especially like My Shopping List, which lets you save product results for later viewing. You can also designate any of those products to appear on your Wish List, which you can e-mail to other people. A number of online retailers, such as Amazon, have wish lists, but they're limited to products on their own sites.

I've talked to many merchants who sell on eBay, Amazon, and their own Web sites, and who are doubtful about Froogle's utility. But it's too early to write it off. As the company says in the Froogle site's Frequently Asked Questions, "beta" means that "the Froogle you see today is likely to evolve and improve over time." When a little more human insight gets applied to Froogle's seemingly solid technical underpinnings, it's a good bet Google can fulfill that promise.

Hof is BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau chief .