It had to happen eventually – Google begins moves into the price comparison arena, starting with financial services through it’s new Google Merchant Search feature:

Today, if you type in phrases such as “compare loans”, “cheap credit cards”, and so forth, you get a range of comparison sites from the likes of MoneySupermarket and GoCompare who have spent years getting high rankings in the natural search results or paying a premium for the paid advertising.

Now, Google can’t remove them but it can take a massive piece of the action. Imagine typing those phrases in now and actually getting “google merchant search” results at the top first, in the same way blog and news results currently appear!

It doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to see how this can also apply to utilities, cars, flights, and generic shopping categories like consumer electronics (a la Kelkoo). This is huge! I’ll do a follow up post on this shortly – just wanted to get some first-hand comments and feedback first..