Google and Walmart team up to take on Amazon's Echo

Wal-Mart is teaming up with Alphabet Inc's Google to enter the nascent voice-shopping market, currently dominated by Amazon.com Google, which makes the Android software used to run most of the world's smartphones, will offer hundreds of thousands of Walmart items on its voice-controlled Google Assistant platform from late September, Walmart's head of e-commerce, Marc Lore, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. 'Starting in late September, we'll be working with Google to offer hundreds of thousands of items for voice shopping via Google Assistant - the largest number of items currently offered by a retailer through the platform,' he wrote. Wal-Mart is teaming up with Google and its Home smart speaker (pictured) to enter the voice-shopping market, currently dominated by Amazon.com, Amazon, whose voice-controlled aide Alexa allows users to shop from the retailer, has the lion's share of the U.S. voice-controlled device industry. Lore, who joined the world's largest retailer after it bought his e-commerce company Jet.com, said Wal-Mart would offer a wider selection than any retailer on the platform.