What you need to know
- A new commit has been spotted, hinting at a handy new shopping feature in Chrome.
- The feature could allow Chrome to automatically fetch retail coupons when online shopping.
- The feature has yet to roll out onto developer or beta versions of Chrome.
Everyone loves saving money, and it looks like Google wants to use Chrome to help you find the best discounts on products, according to a new commit found in Chromium Gerrit.
Chrome Story spotted the commit, which shows that Google is working on a feature that would allow Chrome to automatically fetch coupons for discounts when shopping online. It would display a notification with the coupon description and discount percentage for items in your shopping cart.
The feature sounds a lot like Honey, which is one of the best Chrome extensions for working from home thanks to its ability to quickly pull up discount codes. It's also a feature already built into competing browsers like Microsoft Edge. Soon, it may arrive on the Chrome browser without needing to download a specific extension for the feature to work.
Chrome Story notes that the feature doesn't appear to be available on Chrome Canary, which is usually where experimental features first appear before rolling out on beta and stable channels of Chrome. That said, if you want to try out new features, it's always handy to know how to enable flags in Chrome, which can provide access to hidden Chrome abilities that are often pretty handy.
The new coupon feature is just the latest example of Google ramping up its efforts in e-commerce. During Google I/O 2021, the company announced a partnership with Shopify which experts called "pivotal and a masterstroke from Google." The partnership would give merchants more visibility across Google's shopping platforms, in a move that could challenge Amazon's dominance.
