Google kickstarts GOSF 2014 pre-party today, online festival to be held from 11th to 12th December

 If you are about to buy yourself some new clothes, electronics or household items, hold your horses as Google India has announced the Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) for 2014.

For those who don’t know, GOSF brings together several online retailers across India to offer discounts on their products. The initiative was launched by Google in 2012 to boost the adoption of online shopping in India. Rajan Anandan, VP & Managing Director, Google India, said, “Great Online Shopping Festival is India’s version of cyber Monday in the West and is an exciting platform to raise awareness and consumer adoption of online shopping in India.”

Google has announced that the shopping festival will run between 10 – 12th December, which is just two weeks away. In addition, the GOSF website has announced a pre-party on November 25, as a prelude to the actual shopping festival.

Several websites, including Snapdeal, FabFunish and FirstCry have geared up for the GOSF sale. Coupon Dunia has already listed GOSF shopping coupons for different shopping websites, while DesiDime has created a special section for GOSF on its website, which lets users see all GOSF deals in one place.

Last year, though the festival attracted lots of interest, it met with several road blocks. Less than an hour after the festival went live, the site went down due to a technical error. Google then had to extend the festival by another day. Hopefully, the GOSF team will be better armed this time to run the festival smoothly.

GOSF aims to bring more Indians onto the web, while also boosting sales of various online portals. Google itself has a lot to gain through the GOSF sale. As reported by NextBigWhat, Google India’s revenues have skyrocketted by 48% over last year. As the festival attracts hordes of new online shoppers, Google stands to benefit with the multitude of advertisements and marketing campaigns launched by e-commerce portals.

According to the NextBigWhat, “Google makes no money out of GOSF, but through the entire year, they probably make more money than Ecommerce portals.”