Coming soon to a tablet/smartphone* near you - Google Catalogs.

As is immediately obvious from the above spelling, this is currently a stateside only thing (or at least, it appears to be from the information I've been able to glean thus far).

Also immediately obvious is the sigh-making statement "a greener way to shop", without anything in the way of corroboration for such a claim. Why is that then? I'm with US Blog Dead Tree Edition on this.

And once again, remind me, what is Google's carbon footprint? Answers on a postcard (not an email, please), as per.

Annoyances aside, this move by the search behemoth is potentially impactful for all sorts of people in our space, as it very definitely treads on the toes of various companies who specialise in this sort of thing. Ceros, Yudu, Zinio and Flexiflip spring to mind, as does the up-for-sale Pindar-owned Agility software business.

Am intrigued to know whether it's Google tech driving it, or someone else's. Will attempt to go away and find out. 

Definitely something to keep an eye on, though, as is apparent from the array of brands already signed up. Will Google's clout make this a compelling alternative to the 'flick-to-click' print-driving-online-sales model?

*Actually, upon re-reading the info it seems to be just for tablets.