Amazon Eyes Online Grocery Player

Amazon may be looking across the pond for its next move into a singularly focused area of online retail.

Following its rollouts of AmazonFresh, Prime Pantry and Dash, all signs began pointing to the likelihood that the eCommerce giant was looking to implement a full-fledged grocery delivery service.

While things are still in just the rumor stage, the latest murmur regarding Amazon’s potential expansion in that regard is a pretty big one.

Daily Mail reports having received indications that the U.S.-based Internet powerhouse may currently be in talks to acquire the U.K.’s Ocado, which (according to Forbes) is the largest dedicated online supermarket in the world.

Amazon’s rumored maneuver, Daily Mail assesses, would set the company up to launch an online grocery delivery service of its own in the U.K.

A potential added bonus for Amazon, continues the story, is that the very rumblings of its potentially competing with Ocado have caused the latter’s shares to drop precipitously over the last several months, thus making buying the company outright a more cost-effective option for Amazon in comparison to having to build its own operation in the region from the ground up.

“For Amazon, it would be a perfect fit,” a market source told Daily Mail.

As for the two companies at the center of all this speculation, Ocado offered no comment to the outlet, while an Amazon spokesman remarked: “We never comment on rumor and speculation.”

Of course, were Amazon to do for groceries what it did for books — as MPD CEO Karen Webster postulated that it just might, back in April — that would speak for itself.