Coming soon to a street near you – Google the estate agent

Published on Thursday 3 December 2009 21:30

INTERNET giant Google is in talks with estate agents to launch a free online property portal in the UK, which experts say could revolutionise the process of buying a home.

• Google is considering opening a property site in Britain, which could trigger a war with existing portals

Scottish estate agents insisted last night they would welcome the global internet giant into the local property market and could use the new portal to help clients.

But analysts warned that there could be a major battle between existing property websites in the UK and Google when the US firm moves in.

Google launched a property portal in Australia last August through which estate agents list properties for free, showing both pictures taken from its Street View service and details on a map.

Ed Mead, commercial director at London-based estate agent Douglas & Gordon, confirmed yesterday that it had spoken to Google about launching a similar scheme in the UK.

He said: "It looks very simple. If it stays free, then Google has a massive winner on its hands as it will get the backing from estate agents currently paying for rival sites."

Scottish estate agents last night admitted that the presence of Google on the property scene would change the home-buying process.

David Marshall, from the Edinburgh Solicitors Property Centre, said: "People already use Google to search for an estate agent or website, like ours. In the future, people might use Google to search for an actual property, but they will still end up being directed to sites like the ESPC.

"Google will not provide the same kinds of services we do, like property matching for clients. Our research tells us people still use property websites, newspaper adverts and showrooms to buy property and that would continue."

There were also claims that the free Google service could make buying and selling a home cheaper.

Mark Hordern, from the Glasgow Solicitors Property Centre, said: "Because the service Google is talking about is free, it could potentially make the process cheaper. But I have to say that efforts to create free property portals by Google in Australia were not spectacularly successful.

"Google coming into the Scottish market would have to be taken very seriously by estate agents. But I think it is the big property websites who would have most to worry about, because they charge estate agents to advertise, but Google would not."

Savills' Jonathan Cunliffe admitted, however, that the move by Google into the UK property market could create a trade war.

He said: "The interesting thing will be to see how and if they charge for content. That is where the battle between the portals might begin."

Google refused to comment last night on its plans for a new UK property portal. Rightmove, the market-leading property website in Britain, insisted the news was not a threat to existing property portals.

Miles Shipside, commercial director of Rightmove, said: "Google is pre-eminent as a way of searching for information. But when people know what they want and want to source quality information clearly presented, they turn to websites such as Amazon for books and CDs, eBay for auctioned collectibles, Autotrader for cars and Rightmove for property."

WEB PORTAL CHIEF DENIES IT ACTS AS A PARASITE ON NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY

GOOGLE'S UK boss denied yesterday that the search engine is a parasite for giving away news content, claiming it was more like a "virtual newsagent".

Matt Brittin, managing director of Google UK was giving evidence to the House of Commons' culture, media and sport committee on the future of local and regional media. Chairman John Whittingdale said the committee had had evidence from the newspaper industry that Google acted like a parasite in the way it gave away news content for nothing, while raking in advertising revenue.

Mr Brittin responded: "I've read in newspapers, oddly enough, some of the comments that have been made about parasites. I want to make one thing incredibly clear: we do not steal content."

He said Google contained "snippets" with a link to the originator's website, in line with copyright law. He added: "It's wrong to paint us as stealing content. We are, if you like, a virtual newsagent. You come to Google News, you find the stories you're interested in, you go through to the website.

"The amount of traffic that comes from us is equivalent to about 100,000 clicks a minute to news publishers' websites. We provide links, we provide distribution."