Google has re-named its Froogle shopping search engine Google Product Search. The name Froogle was intended to be a pun on ‘frugal’ and was coined at a time when the company’s commercial ventures were in their infancy and the company was known for its intelligent wit as much as the accuracy of its search results.

‘while it was a cute and clever name, it had issues around copyright and trademark, as well as internationalization…The pun (to “frugal”) isn’t obvious.’

Since then there’s been an IPO, a tranch of acquisitions and a much sharper commercial outlook. Froogle has cleary become a bit of an embarassment and was shunted off the font page. Now, under the heading Products, it’s back and is doing its bit to promote Google’s Checkout payment system, which launched in the UK this week. Surfers can elect to return results only from those retailers which accept Google Checkout payments.

Google’s vice president of search product and user experience, Marissa Mayer, told Cnet that ‘while it was a cute and clever name, it had issues around copyright and trademark, as well as internationalization…The pun (to “frugal”) isn’t obvious.’

Meanwhile, Yahoo, Google’s biggest competitor in the search engine space, and eBay, which owns PayPal, have joined forces to compete with Google Checkout. Paid search engine listings in Yahoo in the US now feature a blue shopping cart icon which links directly to merchants that accept PayPal Express Checkout.

Google Checkout is widely seen as a competitor to PayPal, though Google said when it launched in the US that it didn’t see it that way. To promote its launch in the UK, sites like eBuyer and Empire Direct are offering a £10 discount on purchses over £30 made with Google Checkout. PayPal, meanwhile has signed up big-name retailers like Boots, and eBay has banned Google Checkout as a payment method on the site.

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