Just before the Made by Google event last night which saw the unveiling of eight new products including the Pixel 2 smartphones, Pixelbook, Google Home Max, and many more, it was reported that the company has quietly expanded its online store into Malaysia. As it turns out, we learned that this is not exactly the case.
When we first saw the report online, several of our team members recalled that Google might already have had a similar page in one way or another for the Malaysian market when the company officially released Chromecast into Malaysia in 2015. So, we reached out to Google Malaysia in order to obtain clarifications regarding this matter.
We were then informed by the company that the inclusion of Malaysia is part of global refresh for the online store. However, this doesn’t mean the Google Store has been activated for our market though which explained why the store still points customers to Lazada instead of allowing them to purchase Chromecast 2 and Chromecast Audio directly through the online store.
The way we see it, the actual role of Google Store Malaysia at the moment is just to inform users regarding both products which is similar to their original product site. In case you are not aware of them, Chormecast 2 and Chromecast Audio are still the only Made by Google devices that are officially available in Malaysia even though they were released into our market more than a year ago.
Hence, we are not surprised that Google didn’t made any announcement regarding Google Store expansion into Malaysia. Because, frankly speaking, we don’t think there was any expansion in the first place.
That being said, who knows…maybe one day Google will eventually turn the Google Store Malaysia into a proper Google Store. Only time will tell.
(Thanks to everyone sent in the initial Google Store Malaysia report.)
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