French retail chain Carrefour SA said June 11 that it teamed up with Alphabet Inc.'s Google for online grocery shopping in France using the U.S. tech giant's platforms.
The partnership enables customers to buy Carrefour's products using Google Assistant, connected speakers such as Google Home and a new Google shopping site from early 2019.
In addition, Carrefour will open an innovation lab with Google Cloud in Paris this summer, where the retail chain's team will work with Google's artificial intelligence experts for new consumer experiences.
Google will also train more than 1,000 Carrefour employees in new technologies and deploy G Suite productivity tools and collaborative solutions such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive and Google Hangouts across the Carrefour group.
In March, the retailer partnered with Google for an online voice assistant, called Lea, for its customers.
These partnerships could be seen as a major digital push by the retailer toward its transformation plan, which the company unveiled in January. Carrefour said it will invest €2.8 billion in digital capability by 2022 under this plan.
