Supermarkets connect to Yummly, order goods directly with Google

Checkout; check inventory in local store in real time;

guide with maps

Crowd provides recipes and feedback, creates

groups based on locale, interest, skill level

Integrate digital kitchen technologies (fridge, scales, mixer)

Provide checkout, integrate with G+, Glass

Food sites are getting billions on monthly views. People have been cookin’ since the late Pleistocene age, so it’s a fairly enduring activity. People have been eating even longer than that. IN addition, cooking and eating are fairly recession-resistant activities, and generally end only at death.

What’s in this for Google? Food is even more addictive than email and an iPhone. If you can own the kitchen, you own a major, major, part of human activity. This dwarfs space flight or augmented reality, which Google has been promoting. The kitchen is a source of massive potential synergies for Google: own the supermarket ordering and checkout process; know eating habits and data (how about advertising some anti-cholesterol meds or exercise coupons… scary data implications, I know). Beverages and other very high margin products can be owned through the kitchen. And this is an area in which some major efficiencies need to be found. Rice cookers and microwavs have taken us about as far as they can, and are the only material innovation in 25 years. The rest will be digital and Google needs to own it.

Some food sites that Google wishes it owned: Foodnetwork.com, Recipezaar.com, Allrecipes.com, Epicurious.com