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Tag: BufferBox

  • Google Expands BufferBox Throughout San Francisco

    Google Expands BufferBox Throughout San Francisco

    Google announced on Monday that it is expanding its BufferBox pilot in San Francisco.

    BufferBox is a locker service, which has already been available in Toronto. Google acquired it last November, and eventually started testing the service in the San Francisco area. Here’s one at Coffee Bar, which co-founder Mike McCauley shared in April:

    BufferBox

    Google says you’ll be able to find BufferBox kiosks at partner locations around the city, including Dogpatch Cafe, Coffee Bar, Noe Hill Market, 7-Eleven, etc. You can find them here.

    If you live in San Francisco, you can start using the service for free at BufferBox.com.

    “With BufferBox, you can order from your favorite online retailers and have items delivered to a convenient BufferBox kiosk in your local coffee shop, supermarket, or retail store,” explains McCauley, who now carries the product manager title. “You’ll receive an instant email notification when your parcel is ready for pickup. You can even use BufferBox with our recently expanded Google Shopping Express service — simply enter your BufferBox Address as your shipping address when checking out and select the 9am-1pm delivery window to collect your items later that same evening.”

    Google announced the expansion of same-day delivery service Google Shopping Express to everyone in the Bay Area last week.

    Google Shopping Express

    Google says it will integrate BufferBox further, and expand to more locations.

  • Google Puts A BufferBox Locker In A San Francisco Coffee Bar

    Back in November, news came out that Google acquired BufferBox, a locker service for people receiving packages from online retailers.

    A Google spokesperson said at the time, “We want to remove as much friction as possible from the shopping experience, while helping consumers save time and money, and we think the BufferBox team has a lot of great ideas around how to do that”

    Well, it looks like they’re getting started. BufferBox co-founder Mike McCauley tweeted on Monday that there’s now a BufferBox pickup in a San Francisco Coffee Bar, which is reportedly the first U.S. location (hat tip: Drew Olanoff):

    BufferBox

    According to McCauley, they’re still in the process of testing, but they hope to have it available to the public soon.

  • Google Acquires BufferBox Locker Service

    It looks like Google is picking up the pace on acquisitions again. Sure, one of them wasn’t real, but earlier this week, there was one legitimate Google acquisition announcement with news that the company has acquired Incentive Targeting. Now, news is out that Google has acquired BufferBox, a locker service for people getting packages from online retailers.

    A post on the BufferBox blog (via TechCrunch) says:

    We are excited to announce that BufferBox has been acquired by Google!

    We have been able to achieve more than we could have ever imagined since we started working on our idea a couple years ago, and the team couldn’t be more excited about the future. As online shopping becomes a bigger part of how you buy products, we look forward to playing a part in bringing that experience to the next level. We are happy to share that it will be business as usual for our users and we are looking forward to continuing to build out the service.

    It has been an incredible journey and we’d like to thank everyone who has played such an important part in enabling us to make it this far. We couldn’t be happier to be able to continue building out our vision within Google.

    TechCrunch provides the following statement from a Google spokesperson: “We want to remove as much friction as possible from the shopping experience, while helping consumers save time and money, and we think the BufferBox team has a lot of great ideas around how to do that”

    Amazon, one of Google’s biggest competitors (in some spaces) has a locker service, which it has been expanding. These lockers have been seen in grocery stores, drug stores and convenience stores like 7-Eleven (which are open 24 hours).

    BufferBox allows users to register for a locker shipping address and have items shipped to it. You simply enter that address as the shipping address for any online purchases you might make, and than pick up your packages at your convenience, using your PIN, which the company emails you.

    They have a free trial going on right now, and the first delivery is free for new customers.

    It will be interesting to see how Google implements the lockers as a Google service, or whether they’ll just continue to operate it as is.

    No word on the terms of the deal.