#Google Overhauls Product Search, Ditches Boutiques.com

• By Chloe Albanesius
• September 23, 2011 09:33am EST

Google continued to clean house this week, ditching its Boutiques.com site and folding it into Google Product Search.
Going forward, Boutiques.com traffic will be redirected to Google Product Search. The full transition is expected by October 14; Google said it will email users with instructions on how to save Boutiques.com data.
Google unveiled Boutiques.com in November 2010 and touted it as a Web site that combined computing power with fashion savvy in an effort to keep users informed about trends and provide shopping recommendations.
The team behind Boutiques.com came from Like.com, an online retailer that Google acquired last year. In a Thursday blog post, Google said the Like.com team "will drive new ideas for apparel shopping through one unified product. The team is excited to be a part of the shopping experience on Google and have our work displayed to millions of users every day."
Burak Gokturk, Like.com co-founder and member of the Google Commerce team, said the move is the "first in a series of improvements we're making to Google Product Search leveraging the computer vision and machine learning technology developed by the team we affectionately call our fashion and computer nerds."
For now, Google has unveiled a new Product Search homepage, which has a new look "designed to inspire and facilitate easy, enjoyable browsing and shopping," Gokturk said. That includes larger images, simplified text, and lighter colors.
"Using the same innovative machine learning and computer vision technologies we developed for Boutiques, you can now browse dress collections that match the color, silhouette and genre you desire," he said.
Google also added the option to see similar items; a striped dress, for example. "We hope it brings that element of surprise and discovery we all love with brick-and-mortar shopping to the online shopping experience," Gokturk wrote.
In the wake of Larry Page taking over as CEO, Google has cleaned house a bit. Earlier this month, Google said it would shut down several products, including Aardvark, Fast Flip, Google Desktop, and more. In recent months, Google also shut down its Labs offering.
Google's product search, meanwhile, got some mention at this week's Senate Judiciary hearing, where Eric Schmidt was a witness. One senator accused Google of "cooking" its results to always feature Google-owned products at the top of results, but Schmidt said, "I cannot assure that we've not cooked anything." Schmidt also tangled with Yelp over how Google uses competitors' content.
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