Carrefour takes on French rivals in e-commerce with Google tie-up

PARIS (Reuters) - France's largest food retailer Carrefour is teaming up with Google to boost its online shopping business on its home turf, where rivals are also launching e-commerce offensives.

Carrefour said on Monday that from next year its groceries would be available on the U.S. search engine's new dedicated shopping site in France, or through Google-operated systems such as connected speakers and voice-assisted devices.

The tie-up comes amid a broader shake-up in France's competitive food retail market as retailers invest in online platforms and home delivery services to win over clients and ward off in-roads by U.S. e-commerce giant Amazon.

Casino's upmarket Monoprix chain in March became the first French retailer to agree to sell products on Amazon. Casino also has a home delivery partnership with UK online retailer Ocado.

Alphabet Inc's Google, meanwhile, has been pushing to roll out new shopping services to retailers such as Walmart, enabling them to list products on a special shopping site or Google Assistant on mobile phones and voice devices.

The U.S. firm hopes the programme will allow retailers to capture more purchases on mobile phones or smart home devices. The Carrefour deal marks the first partnership in France.

The companies said in a statement they would open an innovation lab in Paris this summer, in partnership with Google Cloud, for research into artificial intelligence that can be used in consumer services.

Google will also roll out its G Suite productivity tools - where it rivals Microsoft Office - to the entire Carrefour group and its 160,000 employees, the companies said.

(Reporting by Sarah White and Pascale Denis; Editing by Mark Potter)