One of the most novel concepts that Amazon.com Inc. introduced with its Alexa voice assistant is the ability for consumers to purchase goods from its marketplace by simply saying the names of products. Today, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced that it’s teaming up with Google LLC to introduce a competing capability.

The feature, dubbed Walmart Voice Order, enables users to order groceries through the search giant’s Google Assistant. It aims to provide the same straightforward, natural-language buying experience that Alexa offers.

Consumers can start a shopping session by giving the command ”Hey Google, talk to Walmart.” Saying the name of a product prompts the service to add it to a cart in Walmart’s e-commerce marketplace, though the user doesn’t have to check out right away. The retailer designed the voice interface so that items can be collected piecemeal and then ordered all at once.

Walmart Voice Order also packs some machine learning technology. It can automatically deduce what specific product a user wishes to order when they say something like “add shampoo to my cart” by looking at their purchase history.

Walmart and Google will start rolling out the capability later this month. The companies plan to add support for the entire range of Google Assistant-compatible devices, including smart speakers, TVs, smartwatches and products from outside hardware makers.

The search giant’s voice assistant is currently available on more than a billion devices worldwide. That amounts to a substantial addressable market for Walmart, though the service only accounts for about 24% of the key smart segment, compared with Alexa’s 60% market share.  Walmart said that it will make its new voice shopping tool available on more platforms over time to reach more consumers.

The company’s partnership with Google comes as part of a broader trend of traditional brick-and-mortar chains upgrading their technology capabilities. Only last month,  McDonald’s Corp. joined the fray by acquiring artificial intelligence provider Dynamic Yield Ltd. for a reported $300 million. Dynamic Yield’s software generates personalized buying recommendations for users when they interact with a point-of-sale system.

Photo: Google