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I did a Google search and found nothing, but Google Shopper is now available in the Android Market. As if the name didn’t tip you off, this is an application for shopping. Users can search for products using voice, pictures, barcodes, or plain old text. A YouTube video is upcoming, but I wanted to get this news out there.
From Google: Shopper recognizes books, CDs, DVDs, and video games by their cover art, and also offers barcode scanning and voice search. You can view prices, reviews, and specs, and star your favorites for later. Shopper also saves your history for use offline and lets you share products with friends. Currently U.S. prices only.
Download it and let us know what you think. Does ShopSavvy have a real competitor now?
Update: Speaking of ShopSavvy, we contacted the founder of Big in Japan to get his response.
“From our perspective it is more of the same. Google has always had a barcode scanner – i.e. ‘Barcode Scanner’. It was available the first day just like ShopSavvy was. It uses Google’s shopping data which is good (we include it in ShopSavvy), but we also have direct relationships with 20,000+ retailers. Google and Amazon are and have always been our biggest competitors.”Alexander MuseBig in Japan
Features of Google Shopper include:
- Detailed product information: Find prices, reviews, specs, and more. Shopper is powered by Google Product Search.
- Barcode scanning: Scan the barcode of almost any product to quickly learn more about it.
- Save your history and favorites: Shopper saves your history and lets you star your favorites for later.
- Scan the covers of books and media: Find a product by simply pointing your camera phone at the cover art of a book, CD, DVD, or video game.
- Voice search: Say the name of a product and find it easily in Shopper.
- Share your finds with friends: Find something you want to share? Click on the share link to post to Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Instant Messaging, etc..
Comment RSS22 Comments
So far it seems to do what Shop Savvy does, and Google Goggles. Took a little bit, but I was finally able to find the link for the YouTube video in the screenshot. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3A6iPKhlrM)
I’m at work, so I don’t much in the way of items to scan, so I can’t fully test it. Hoping it’s faster than the barcode scanning in other apps on my G1. Man I need a Nexus One….
Thanks but I found the official video now that the Shopper site is live.
How did you find that video by the way? It looks like it was uploaded 5 days ago.
The login screen for Shopper on my G1. If I clicked on the screenshot of the video it opened the YouTube App. Added it to favorites, and then checked my YouTube account. I think the thing only had 9 views when I came across it.
its pretty good… unlike shop savvy though, it doesn’t show real stores that carry the product, just online retailers.
out of curiosity, are there any other barcode scanners that people out there prefer instead of shop savvy?
Yup ShopSavvy has a few extra options that Shopper does not. I bet Google starts including this with their firmwares though, just like they did Goggles.
It worked great looking up a book cover for me, but wouldn’t scan a bar or QR code to save my life. Shop Savvy scanned the code in this post (to dl Shopper) in 2 seconds or less. Shopper didn’t read it at all. I’ll keep both for now, and hope Shopper gets updated to read codes (or I figure out how to do it right
Ill bet that the add all the features of shop savvy, google does what google does best, take other peoples ideas and make them better, look at what happened to more mapquest after maps came out.
I was finally able to play with the app once I got home.
I used to use Shop Savvy all the time, and after more and more OS updates for my G1, the barcode scanner got progressively crappier. It’s to the point that it keeps trying to auto focus and losing what it’s trying to scan.
I attempted to take picture searches of things like my PSP Go, or a DUALSHOCK 3 controller, a video game, or SNICKERS bar. It kept trying to scan, but couldn’t find anything. However if I scanned the barcode on a video game, or let it scan the title of a book, it pulled up results very well. One weird result however was when I scanned the barcode for the SNICKERS bar, it brought back a 2006-2009 Honda Ridgeline Fender left. Not quite as tasty as this SNICKERS will eventually be.
If you’re doing a barcode scan, it runs very fast on the G1. I bet this would be insane crazy fast on a Nexus One. Sadly I can’t get mine yet.
The app is okay, as mentioned US prices only.
I have a Nexus One and a G1 – the barcode scanning is way way better on the Nexus One. As are most things
Whereas the other barcode services that use Google Shopping pull through local (UK) results – this doesn’t. Bit strange.
The thing that strikes me first about this is why didn’t they just include these features in Goggles and wait a bit to launch that? Do I really need 2 programs that do very similar things?
that’s a good point nick… unfortunately i’ve yet to find something near me (like the eiffel tower) that i can use google goggles on, but i would be curious to see if shopper would recognize landmarks such as that. any ideas?
ok, just gave it a try using a picture of the eiffel tower… goggles brought it up right away, directing me to search results for it… shopper took a while, then brought me to “jimmy dunn – sheetrockin’ the eiffel tower” cd.
google should really just streamline the 2 apps. very cool, either way though.
You are right nick. Well, They should have included all these features in one program. But since they have done it this way, all we can do is use the program which is more applicable to us.
so after messing around with this and google goggles i’m kinda confused what the difference is. They both seem pretty much the same
Pretty interesting application. It seems like it works better than some of the ones that Apple offers. This one seems like it does more than just scan the bar code.