The ink has not even dried on the Morrisons deal with Ocado and already there is speculation about whether it right for the future of the grocer.

The ink has not even dried on the Morrisons deal with Ocado and already there is speculation about whether it right for the future of the grocer.

The City has waited a long time for Morrisons to show its hand in online grocery so some of the brokers were pleased they were seeing real progress.

For others though, tying up with Ocado is just a costly exercise that could have been done so much more cheaply if it had picked from its own stores.

The deal will mean that Morrisons can hopefully go from a standing start to a pretty big online grocery business quite quickly.

But the deal raises more questions than it gives answers. The length of the arrangement - 25 years - is a key question. Ocado wanted this deal to happen as much as Morrisons did so why did the grocer choose to sign up for so long?

With the rapid pace of change in online retailing, who knows where we will be in 10 years, let alone 25 years.

Morrisons says the length of the deal shows its commitment, but nobody would have questioned its commitment had it signed a 10 year deal.

The other tricky part of the situation is Morrisons’ non-food online operation. When it bought innovative baby etailer Kiddicare, it bought some of the brightest people in etail. Many thought that buy was a coup, and gave Morrisons the etail brains it was so sadly lacking.

But what now does not make sense is having two platforms - one, based on Kiddicare’s platform, for non-food, and one for food. If the customer has to have separate baskets, it really will appear backward.

The details of the launch are still under wraps and Morrisons still has time to perfect its launch. Let’s hope some of these questions are answered when we see the final product.