Google braces itself for record-breaking Black Friday sales

Google is preparing itself for a massive surge in online shopping, as consumers take advantage of the upcoming Black Friday deals.

With popular retail stores continuing to remain closed or reducing in-store hours due to the coronavirus pandemic, it’s likely that more consumers than ever will purchase products online.

The end result bodes well for Google, as its cloud technology is used to host websites and store data. The more people who visit those sites, the higher Google’s revenue will rise as fees for its services are often related to a website’s traffic. 

• Get ready for term time: back to school sales
• Need a new laptop? The best student laptops
• Go wireless: the cheapest Apple AirPods prices, sales and deals 

However, the company is struggling to predict how big that traffic spike will be. Google has thrown out the linear growth model it uses to predict how many servers it will need to process for web orders for retailers, as it simply doesn’t know. 

Speaking to Reuters, vice president of retail and consumer at Google Cloud, Carrie Tharp, said: “We’re planning for peak on top of peak.” This will ultimately translate into a huge revenue spike for Google Cloud, which generated around 30% of its revenue during the fourth quarter in the last two years. 

Ever since lockdown began back in March, Tharp noted that shops have already seen Black Friday-like surges in demand. This has led to some retailers, such as Best Buy, adopting Google Cloud’s predictive algorithms years ahead of schedule to help them determine the most efficient way to fulfill online orders.

Spending spree

Black Friday is guaranteed to provide some serious savings for tech enthusiasts, with deals expected on the best OLED TVs, best wireless earbuds and best PS4 games. But it’s likely that we’ll see a longer period of deals than usual, as retailers may be inclined to push products that may have been impacted by a reduced footfall in stores. 

Black Friday is also going to land much closer to Amazon Prime Day this time around, which is expected to take place in early October this year, along with Cyber Monday.

With so many products on sale, then, we’ll be diligently scouring the internet to bring you the very best deals on TechRadar. Whether you’re after the best school backpacks or can’t decide on what’s the best smartphone to buy, we’ve got you covered.

• Best e-commerce platforms: website software for an online store