Why is there no massive directory of everything for sale on the internet?

[SgtSpike]

Why is there no "mother of all websites" for retailed goods?  It seems like it would be a fairly simple thing to do.  Retailers batch-submit the goods they have for sale to a given website.  The website tracks price, qty in stock, what the item is, and useful specifications, matching up items as appropriate via UPC barcodes or whatever other unique identifiers they might have.

I suppose what I am picturing is sort of like Google Shopping, but with categorized items (enabling browsing by category) that are retailer-pushed rather than bot-scraped.  Sort of like the eBay of retailing.  eBay + Google Shopping, then, but without multiple listings per item.  Amazon sort of has the right idea, but everything goes through them, so if a vendor isn't set up to sell through Amazon, you don't see their goods.

As a consumer, I would love to have such a website with comprehensive, up-to-date information on who to buy from and what the best prices are.  Why hasn't a project like this been undertaken?

[notme]

Why is there no "mother of all websites" for retailed goods?  It seems like it would be a fairly simple thing to do.  Retailers batch-submit the goods they have for sale to a given website.  The website tracks price, qty in stock, what the item is, and useful specifications, matching up items as appropriate via UPC barcodes or whatever other unique identifiers they might have.

I suppose what I am picturing is sort of like Google Shopping, but with categorized items (enabling browsing by category) that are retailer-pushed rather than bot-scraped.  Sort of like the eBay of retailing.  eBay + Google Shopping, then, but without multiple listings per item.  Amazon sort of has the right idea, but everything goes through them, so if a vendor isn't set up to sell through Amazon, you don't see their goods.

As a consumer, I would love to have such a website with comprehensive, up-to-date information on who to buy from and what the best prices are.  Why hasn't a project like this been undertaken?

How will you motivate the retailers to push their data?  Sure, you could argue it would bring them traffic, but that only applies to the retailer with the best price.

[SgtSpike]

Why is there no "mother of all websites" for retailed goods?  It seems like it would be a fairly simple thing to do.  Retailers batch-submit the goods they have for sale to a given website.  The website tracks price, qty in stock, what the item is, and useful specifications, matching up items as appropriate via UPC barcodes or whatever other unique identifiers they might have.

I suppose what I am picturing is sort of like Google Shopping, but with categorized items (enabling browsing by category) that are retailer-pushed rather than bot-scraped.  Sort of like the eBay of retailing.  eBay + Google Shopping, then, but without multiple listings per item.  Amazon sort of has the right idea, but everything goes through them, so if a vendor isn't set up to sell through Amazon, you don't see their goods.

As a consumer, I would love to have such a website with comprehensive, up-to-date information on who to buy from and what the best prices are.  Why hasn't a project like this been undertaken?

How will you motivate the retailers to push their data?  Sure, you could argue it would bring them traffic, but that only applies to the retailer with the best price.

If 50% of the consumer base checks a massive website to find out where they should shop, wouldn't every retailer be clamoring to push their data to it?

Certainly there's a mass-acceptance barrier to it, I am just surprised no efforts have been made on that front.

[01BTC10]

In Canada we have this: http://www.shopbot.ca

[SgtSpike]

In Canada we have this: http://www.shopbot.ca

Just a quick look seems like that's the sort of directory I am looking for...

[Phinnaeus Gage]

In Canada we have this: http://www.shopbot.ca

Just a quick look seems like that's the sort of directory I am looking for...

...But for 200 countries and in 6000 languages, not to mention the various currencies of which rumor has it there's a new kid on the block.

[RoadToHell]

You can upload all of your product information to Google.  The products will display with normal search results.

http://www.google.com/merchants/

This is free (used to be when I did it anyway) and is different than Google Shopping or Adwords.

[Epicurus]

Why is there no "mother of all websites" for retailed goods?  It seems like it would be a fairly simple thing to do.  Retailers batch-submit the goods they have for sale to a given website.  The website tracks price, qty in stock, what the item is, and useful specifications, matching up items as appropriate via UPC barcodes or whatever other unique identifiers they might have.

I suppose what I am picturing is sort of like Google Shopping, but with categorized items (enabling browsing by category) that are retailer-pushed rather than bot-scraped.  Sort of like the eBay of retailing.  eBay + Google Shopping, then, but without multiple listings per item.  Amazon sort of has the right idea, but everything goes through them, so if a vendor isn't set up to sell through Amazon, you don't see their goods.

As a consumer, I would love to have such a website with comprehensive, up-to-date information on who to buy from and what the best prices are.  Why hasn't a project like this been undertaken?

Because directories are inefficient and silly, due to the volume of data that is largely irrelevant to an individual user. That's why Yahoo, which began as simply a directory of sites, got trumped by Google, which crawls and indexes.

Just use google shopping. It's a far improved version of what you're looking for.

shopping.google.com

[FirstAscent]

I'm at a loss as to why the OP believes there isn't such a thing to the extent that it is possible. There are product for sale aggregating sites which do use intermediary product databases seeded by retailers.

[RoadToHell]

You can upload all of your product information to Google.  The products will display with normal search results.

http://www.google.com/merchants/

This is free (used to be when I did it anyway) and is different than Google Shopping or Adwords.

Actually Google Shopping doesn't use scraped data, it uses the data pushed by merchants.

(The info pushed by merchants is also displayed in standard Google search results.)