The Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF)

The Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) was created by Google India on 12 December 2012 in collaboration with a number of Indian online shopping portals. The concept of the GOSF was that the online shopping sites would give heavy discounts for one day, in order to promote their sales.

The concept of a one-day online sale originated in the United States, where many online shopping sites offer discounts on "Cyber Monday", the first Monday after the so-called Black Friday, the day that follows the U.S. Thanksgiving. Cyber Monday started in 2005 and the concept has spread to several countries including Canada, Japan, Australia, Colombia, and the U.K.. In China a similar day of online shopping is observed on November 11, which is known as "Singles Day".

The first Great Online Shopping Festival in 2012 was advertised on YouTube and via posts on Google Plus. For the event, Google partnered with a number of ecommerce sites such as Flipkart, HomeShop18, Snapdeal, Indiatimes shopping, and Makemytrip, which would participate in the GOSF. The ecommerce sites created dedicated landing pages for GOSF. GOSF site engaged users through games and showing offers and eventually it redirected users to the dedicated landing pages of ecommerce sites to do the transactions.

According to critics, the first GOSF left some consumers a little disappointed as the discounts were marginal or nonexistent.

In 2013, the Great Online Shopping Festival was held on 11–14 December. Participating companies included Myntra, Jabong.com, and Indiatimes Shopping. Google claimed that the shopping festival was a success for the companies, and extended the event, which was planned to end on 13 December, by one day.

The Great Online Shopping Festival 2014

In December 2014, the GOSF will involve over 300 online retailers including Flipkart, Myntra, Amazon.com, Snapdeal, Lenskart, HomeShop18, The MobileStore and Indiatimes. It will take place on Dec 10 - 12.