I took Froogle for a test drive yesterday. It told me that I can buy a 128MB secure digital memory module for my PDA for as little as $40.00. The price on an iPod mini doesn't budge much from Apple's suggested $249, but Froogle has some special offers, including a deal at Audible that will get the buyer a $100 break on an MP3 player for joining. Being frugal, I will likely use the new search engine often.

Reuters explains how it works and Google's reasons fro releasing it.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc. the No. 1 Web search engine widely expected to go public this year, on Monday put its Froogle shopping tool on its main Web site and said it is testing new services to deliver personalized search results.

"Today, Google takes the first step in providing personal search results based on users' preferences," Google co-founder and President Larry Page said in a statement.

. . .Google's Froogle shopping feature helps users sort items such as digital cameras or Apple iPod music players by price. The service, which for months had been tested in Google Labs (http://labs.google.com/), also got a redesigned home page and search results page.

Yahoo on Friday announced plans to buy Kelkoo SA, a top European price comparison shopping search engine, for about $575 million.

"Yahoo will be one step ahead of Google with this acquisition, making this in part also a defensive move," PiperJaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy said in a research note on Monday.

Froogle is not a complete solution to the lost in space experience looking for a specific item can become on the Internet. Referrals to pages that merely mention the brand name or actually feature another product still occur. Some of the merchants with the lowest prices do not have the proven track record savvy consumers look for. Sponsored links get about a third of Froogle's space on the page. And, you will still need to go to Dealtime or Nextag to do comparisons and to Amazon or CNet for reviews. There is still the matter of location. Once one knows a local merchant has a product, one can dash out and get it instead of going through an ordering process. You will still need to check local merchants for availability after using Froogle. There is not a link to, say, Circuit City that will allow you to check by store or zip code, so you will have to browse the site separately, though you already know the product's price.