Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is teaming up with Google Inc. to build its own voice-assisted shopping experience, as it looks to go head-to-head with similar features offered by Amazon.com Inc.

Wal-Mart and Google announced today that users will soon be able to place Wal-Mart orders using Google Assistant either through the Google Home smart speaker or through the Google Express website or mobile app. According to Google, users can also receive unique recommendations based on their order histories when they link their existing Walmart.com account with their Google Assistant.

“When it comes to voice shopping, we want to make it as easy as possible for our customers,” Wal-Mart Chief Executive Marc Lore said in a statement. “That’s why it makes sense for us to team up with Google. They’ve made significant investments in natural language processing and artificial intelligence to deliver a powerful voice shopping experience. We know this means being compared side-by-side with other retailers, and we think that’s the way it should be.”

Sridhar Ramaswamy, senior vice president of ads and commerce at Google, added that, not surprisingly, Google is “thrilled to partner with one of the most popular stores in America to help make your shopping faster and easier.”

Wal-Mart is still primarily a brick-and-mortar business, but the company’s e-commerce segment has been growing steadily after many years of fits and starts, with a 60 percent increase in Walmart.com net sales in its last quarter. Wal-Mart noted in its most recent earnings report that customers have responded positively to many of its new online initiatives, including free two-day shipping to Wal-Mart stores and discounts for orders with in-store pickup.

Many of these initiatives seem to be aimed at leveraging Wal-Mart’s physical stores to give the company’s online shopping an edge over Amazon, and Lore said in his statement that Wal-Mart plans to use its 4,700 U.S. retail stores and fulfillment infrastructure to “create customer experiences that don’t currently exist within voice shopping anywhere else.” However, the retailer has tried that before and generally failed to make a dent in Amazon’s dominance.

Indeed, even with its brick-and-mortar assets, Wal-Mart still has a tough fight on its hands with Amazon, which dominates the e-commerce market more than ever. Amazon’s prices are generally comparable to those found in most big-box stores, but its vast inventory is hard for even the largest retailers to beat. Wal-Mart will have an especially hard time winning over Amazon Prime members, who not only receive faster free shipping, but also a host of online benefits such as Prime Video and Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.

“While we are encouraged to see Google continue to enhance its eCommerce/Shopping offering, we believe the attention the announcement received was overblown, especially as it relates to the potential impact on Amazon’s business,” Cowen & Co. analyst John Blackledge wrote in a note to clients.

Google is also hoping to take on Amazon with the new Wal-Mart partnership, as Google Assistant and Google Home go head-to-head with Amazon Alexa and Amazon Echo, respectively. According to a report by eMarketer in May, Amazon Echo will control more than 70 percent of the voice-controlled speaker market this year, with Google Home taking only about 24 percent.

Photo: Wal-Mart