By So you’re at a store looking at a lava lamp at Spencer Gifts and are wondering if you should buy it. Can I get it somewhere cheaper? Is this product/brand reliable or will it break in a couple months? Personally, I’ve been using ShopSavvy and Compare Everywhere to find my answers. But often these applications come up with no results and/or no product reviews. Enter Google Product Search for Mobile.
First of all, give the creators of ShopSavvy and Compare Everywhere a lot of credit… they’ve built awesome products that easily eclipse Google Product Search for Mobile in terms of features. But what Google DOES have that these apps don’t is critical mass. They have immediate access to one of the largest inventories of products on the planet. Until now, when one of the barcode scanning apps didn’t find anything good I would either:
- Search google for the product name review
- Search amazon for the product and read customer reviews
Now not only will searching Google be an awesome alternative to these barcode apps, but it could become the primary go-to app due to this critical mass. I’m not sure just yet, I’ll have to give it a whirl and see. While I dive in, watch this quick video about Google Product Search for Mobile:
At the end of the video they suggest searching “just about anything” in which they include Books, DVDs, Video Games and electronics. Funny thing is… I never had problems with any of these product categories on my existing apps. What if I try 3 random product categories? Lets try lava lamp, baseball glove and tube socks. Don’t ask me where I got these ideas… I’m a random kind of guy:
- Lava Lamp. Success in listing items for sale but they were not accompanied by product reviews.
- Baseball Glove. Success in listing items for sale but they were not accompanied by product reviews.
- Tube Socks. Success/Fail – see above.
So it seems to work for finding broad product categories but I can’t seem to find these user reviews as shown in the video. What if I search for a very specific product? Last month I was in BestBuy deciding on a USB headset/microphone and faced this very problem. I googled the exact product name so I’ll redo that same search with Google Product Search for Mobile. The search term was “Microsoft LifeChat LX-3000”:
And sure enough I’ve got 2 specific products listed at the top from a combined 127 sellers and it comes with product reviews as well. I suppose the items in test round 1 simply didn’t have enough volume of user input to warrant showing “reviews”. I mean, if you review Tube Socks you’ve got to be pretty weird in the first place. In fact, I would prefer to see what those people recommended so I could choose the opposite.
Google Product Search for Mobile only works for Android and iPhones at the moment but I would expect that expand over time. For now, when you’re in a store and about to make a purchase or trying to decide which item to purchase, you’ve got another weapon in your mobile arsenal. And a rather good one at that.
[Via Google Mobile Blog & Google Blog]
so this would be… where, exactly? is it an app? i didnt find it in the market… or is it online? in which case, a url would be awesome…
It looks like you just search for the product at google.com and click the link at the top that relates to product searching. Can’t confirm this though because I’m at work and don’t have signal atm.
@radio_babylon
Google.com it’s another form of searching via mobile browsing.
“Shakes finger at Google”
It makes since that this should work on the iphone but since google has its own cool phone why wouldn’t they do the demo video on their phone and show some love to us supporting their products. I know its not as trendy as the iPhone but it’s still a kick ass phone. So come on google.
Remember that the iPhone base is much larger than the Android, so if Google wants to reach the most amount of customers, so they can charge more for advertising,they need to market on the iPhone…
I do dream (pun not intentional) of a day when Google get so ingrained in the iPhone that the iPhone’s best features will be Google’s… Until Google says “all aboard Android”.
As usual, no indication that this doesn’t exist for the UK. On my G1, open browser and search in Google – no product listings.
One day these anouncements will actually realise that there is life, and paying customers, outside the US.
Nik, normally I share your frustration that our US friends seem to get all the new toys first, but google shopping results are working for me. T-Mobile UK customer.
I searched for “usb mouse” and about 3 results down I found shopping results, just like you would on a desktop browser.
Wouldn’t it be great if shopsavvy and google merged their ideas, and we had barcode scanning with google results. I realise the limitations for that are probably the same reason ShopSavvy’s product base is smaller than google’s. But I can still dream.