Google adds visual search features in shopping, video push
An indication is seen on the entrance to the Google retail retailer within the Chelsea neighborhood of New York Metropolis, U.S., June 17, 2021. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
Sept 29 (Reuters) – Google customers can quickly mix photographs and textual content in search queries, a function unveiled on Wednesday that might assist the Alphabet Inc unit broaden its function in e-commerce and dominance in on-line video.
The brand new function will arrive inside months by way of its Google Lens search software, the corporate mentioned in its livestreamed Search On convention. Google mentioned in Could that advances in synthetic intelligence software program would make this attainable.
“With this new functionality, you may faucet on the Lens icon whenever you’re taking a look at an image of a shirt, and ask Google to seek out you an identical sample — however on one other article of clothes, like socks,” Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan mentioned.
“This helps whenever you’re searching for one thing that may be troublesome to explain precisely with phrases alone.”
The know-how additionally kinds inside movies, together with on Google’s YouTube, already the web’s largest streaming service.
“Your bike has a damaged thingamajig, and also you want some steerage on easy methods to repair it,” Raghavan mentioned. “The purpose-and-ask mode of looking out will make it simpler to seek out the precise second in a video that may assist.”
Customers will be capable to run reverse-image searches when browsing on the Google iOS app or the Chrome desktop browser. Choosing a picture will pull up comparable on-line visuals, which may assist consumers discover the place to purchase gadgets seen in photographs and in the end make them Google Purchasing, its rival to Amazon.com Inc’s market.
Making extra gadgets searchable is one other precedence. Google mentioned it was licensing a free Deal with Maker app to governments and organizations to map routes and assign addresses to companies and houses not but listed on Google Maps. The app may scale back the time it takes governments and organizations to assign addresses for a city from years to weeks, Google mentioned.
Reporting by Paresh Dave in Oakland, California; Modifying by Matthew Lewis and Richard Chang
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