Column: Google and Intel are popping up in the retail world

Finally, we’ve got a plausible explanation for the Google mystery barge floating off the coast of San Francisco. It will be a showroom.

OK, it’ll be a vast and extremely cool, celebrity architect-designed floating showroom, complete with tall sails that look like fish fins. But a showroom is what it will be, and while it’s still under wraps for now, you’ll be able to see the same kind of stuff in a more prosaic setting -- that is, a mall in Paramus, New Jersey.

Google wants to stand out from the competition during the upcoming holiday season, and in the real world, not just the virtual one.

Even Intel has gotten the real-world bug and is opening temporary -- or "pop-up" -- stores for the season, including an exposed brick-walled outpost in NoLita.