If Apple and Amazon can do it, so can Google. The search giant is opening a retail store at its Dublin headquarters after a trial run in London.
The Google store would sell, you guessed it, Google merchandise. What kind of Google merchandise? That has yet to be revealed, but you can bet Google t-shirts will be available.
The store will be located in the Montevetro office block on Dublin’s Barrow Street. The store would have about 1,323 square feet, or 123 square meters for those who will actually be shopping there, with an added mezzanine floor to attract street traffic.
Bloomberg figures that Google is moving to retail in light of the company’s plans to acquire Motorola. It would help the search giant compete with Apple in both the retail and smartphone space.
Google has been testing the concept of a retail store in London since last October. They opened a store inside PC World where they sold laptops running the company’s custom Chromebook operating system.
The company has a store at its California headquarters that sells merchandise, but that’s not open to the public. Of course, they also have an online store where they sell Google and YouTube merchandise.
Google’s Dublin office was a prime location as its the company’s second largest headquarters in the world. The company bought the two buildings that made up its current headquarters last March while leasing two other properties in the area. The Montevetro area that will house the retail store was bought last April for €100 million. Google will also expand its employee force to over 3,000 once everything is said and done.
It remains to be seen if Google will succeed in this venture, but it doesn’t hurt to try.
UPDATE: Google has told Marketing Land that they are not opening a public retail store in Dublin. Google said that the space within their Dublin office could be used as a retail space. It makes it similar to the Google employee-only store that is currently at their main headquarters in California.
