The Google Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) is slated to start on December 10. It will go on for three days and Google expects around 100 million consumers this year through the initiative that it started in 2012. Major online retailers like Amazon, Snapdeal and Jabong will be taking part in the three-day GOSF. GOSF has tied up with over 450 brands and portals to offer exciting discounts to online shoppers this year. “We have partnered with all leading players including Amazon, Snapdeal etc. Flipkart is the leading company which has decided to not participate this year,” said Nitin Bawankule, industry director, e-commerce, Google India.

Flipkart is all set to roll out its own shopping festival via its mobile app Flipkart’s Big App Sale. The festival started on December 8 and will go on till December 12.

GOSF has got the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), a body comprising medium and small retailers, seeing red. CAIT has registered a protest with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, saying that the sale on Google, with larger data resources than Flipkart or Amazon, could be a disaster for brick-and-mortar retailers.

But does that matter if the consumers benefit?

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