Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne predicts greater challenges for the internet giant than had possibly been predicted.
The Google insurance news was enormous when the internet giant announced that it would be stepping into sales in that market, earlier this year, but it could be that it will be facing larger challenges than had been predicted.
It could be that the massive search engine company may find itself facing similar struggles to other comparison sites.
Comparison sites have been nervous as they wonder if all of their hard work would be bashed down by the entry of Google insurance into their space. It seemed somewhat obvious that the company would be able to draw considerable attention to itself, if not only to purchasing policies online. That said, it is now becoming more obvious that the company will also be facing a lot of the same challenges and obstacles that other comparison shoppers have been discovering, particularly when it comes to encouraging shoppers to actually make their purchases online, instead of simply finding a quote and going elsewhere.
The question is now whether Google insurance will be able to close the deal with consumers shopping online.
Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock.com, has now said that the rumored partnership that Google has formed with comparenow.com – an auto insurance comparison website – could be an industry disruptor and might actually assist his own business. Equally, though, he does realize that the efforts that his company has made within the insurance space have not been quite as fruitful as expected.
He explained that “Naturally we expected a higher response. We only sold a few thousand policies in the first nine months of business. However, we see consumer interest increasing. We are working on adding functionality to enable consumers to receive their quotes faster among other improvements.”
While consumers do like to obtain quotes for policies online, what will be interesting to discover is if Google insurance sales will show that the company has the power to encourage shoppers to take that extra step and to actually buy their coverage, or if the search engine giant will suffer from the same problems that are impacting the rest of that online industry.
