Google Express quietly removes Walmart as a retail partner, leaving Target as the only major partner for the beleaguered delivery service
Corbin Davenport / Android Police :
Context & Ripple Effects
Google Express has been contracting for years: it shut its two Bay Area delivery hubs back in 2015 (outsourcing deliveries to on-demand startups), and by September 2018 coverage flagged five years of little progress with a dwindling partner roster. Walmart's exit is the sharpest cut yet, because Walmart had already shown it prefers owning its logistics over renting someone else's — it ended its grocery delivery tie-ups with Uber and Lyft in May 2018 (confirming those 2016 partnerships were over) while building its own infrastructure.
With Walmart gone, Target is the only major retailer still on Google Express, which turns a broad marketplace into a single-retailer storefront. The move matters because it completes Walmart's break from third-party delivery intermediaries — a pattern that later extended to DoorDash, which walked away from the Walmart account in 2022 (citing its long-term customer relationships).
First-order effects
- Walmart now routes its online delivery entirely through its own infrastructure, cutting Google out of the customer relationship and the data that comes with it.
- Google Express is left dependent on Target as its sole major partner, converting a multi-retailer service into what functions as a Target delivery channel.
Second-order effects
- Other retailers weighing Google Express face a clearer signal from Walmart's playbook — end the intermediary deals (Uber, Lyft, and eventually DoorDash all got cut) and own the last mile — pressuring Google to offer terms worth staying for or watch the roster shrink further.
- Target becomes the anomaly: keeping Google Express gives it reach without building its own fleet, but it also means Target's delivery economics are tied to a platform whose other partners keep leaving.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, large retailers consolidate last-mile delivery in-house and neutral aggregators like Google Express are squeezed between Amazon's owned logistics and retailer-owned fleets, surviving only where a retailer judges building its own network not worth it.
- The customer data attached to each delivery shifts decisively to retailers, weakening any intermediary's claim that scale across merchants justifies its position in the chain.
The trend: Major retailers are pulling last-mile delivery in-house and shedding third-party intermediaries, leaving platforms like Google Express with a steadily thinning partner base.