Google is raising the stakes in its marketplace war against Amazon. Although it is more widely known as a search engine, Google now intends to gain more market share by stepping into the fashion industry.
The company has introduced a tool to entice customers with the new features. On Thursday, Google announced that it would display the images of models, who will be holding the same product as the one you were browsing.
The tool is called “Style Ideas,” and as said by the associate product manager Julia Enthoven, it will showcase,
“inspirational lifestyle images and outfits that showcase how the product can be worn in real life,”
For example, if you search for Zara’s bag, you will be able to see the women posing with the selected handbag in the real-world setting.
“With style ideas, you can see real-life options of what bag and jeans look stellar with those red high heels you’ve been eyeing,” Enthoven wrote. “Or if running gear is more your speed, no sweat—workout ensemble ideas are just a tap away.”
This move came as a response to the Amazon’s aggressive yet silent headway into the advertising business. Amazon is eventually challenging and surpassing the Google’s supremacy in the digital ads market. When it comes to the phase of converting scores of users and visitors from researching the product to making a purchase, Amazon has always moved ahead of Google.
According to a survey from an e-commerce startup, BloomReach, an ever growing section of shoppers begins their product search on Amazon instead of Google. This survey constituted of a whopping fifty-five percent of the 2,000 respondents, which was 44 percent in 2016.
According to an analyst at BMO Capital, these stats are said to be instrumental in the downgrading of the stock of Google’s parent company Alphabet last week. This was also predicted by Morgan Stanley as they reported that the Amazon would soon start eating into the Facebook-Google ad duopoly.
The search engine giant says that “Style Ideas” are algorithmically connected with many things, like the type of a product, contents of an image, brand being searched, etc. This feature is only available on mobile phones for now. You can use this feature on mobile web or the Google Search Android app.