Google brings off-line experience to on-line shopping

The search engine of search engines is betting hard for the fashion industry. In a movement that has taken the online world by storm, Google has recently launched Boutiques.com, a personalized shopping experience that lets you find

and discover fashion goods, by creating your own curated boutique or through a collection of boutiques curated by taste-makers—celebrities, stylists, designers and fashion bloggers, as explained by one of the Product Managers of the house.

“We've received a lot of interest from retailers and designers since we launched boutiques.com”, advances one officer to FashionUnited. For its first days on air, overall response has been overwhelmingly positive, according to the figures handled in Google.

Why Fashion? You might be wondering...”We know that many of our users come to Google for all sorts of information and that includes shopping for goods (whether it’s to conduct research on a particular item or find out where to purchase it). To date, shopping for soft goods (i.e. women’s clothing and accessories) online hasn’t quite matched up with the interactive and visual experience that offline shopping offers”, summs up the company.

Using machine learning and computer vision technology, Google via Boutiques.com hopes to bring elements of the offline experience to online shopping while also helping to drive traffic to retailers websites. Thanks to this combined technology, Boutiques uses allows you to visually analyze your taste and match it to items you would like. Thus, Boutiques.com is built on technology developed by our team of fashion experts who work with engineers to “teach” our computer systems to understand various patterns, pairings, and genre definitions. When signed into your account, Boutiques.com learns about your style and preferences and in turn, provides you better results and recommendations over time.

Yet at this time Boutiques is only available in the U.S. and only for women’s fashion, they plan to expand in the future and are currently exploring ways to do so, but without any particular development in mind yet.