Google has refreshed its Goggles client for Android-powered smartphones to scan product bar codes from magazines and newspapers almost instantly. The aim is to let Android handsets access product information on the fly and help advertisers provide potential customers with product details.
The updated Goggle client released Tuesday is part of Google’s broader long-term strategy to merge older product-sales technologies like bar codes with cutting-edge marketing tools like visual search and Near Field Communication. Though the earlier Goggles client offered bar-code capabilities, the new scanning process is less cumbersome.
“Open Goggles and hover over the bar code,” explained Google software engineers Leon Palm and Jiayong Zhang in a blog. “Within a second the phone gently vibrates and presents results without requiring a button press. Simply tap on the result to read product reviews, check in-store availability, and compare prices.”
Expanded Image Search
Built-in cameras in Android handsets provide the electronic eye that enables Google’s cloud data centers to see what users are searching for, noted Google Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra.
“In a nutshell, Goggles lets users search for objects using images rather than words,” Gundotra wrote in a blog when Goggles was first introduced. “It sees the world like you do, but it simultaneously taps the world’s info in ways that you can’t. And this makes it a perfect answering machine for your visual questions.”
Now available for download in the Android Market, Google Goggles client version 1.3 gives handset users the ability to snap photos of newspaper and magazine ads and quickly connect them to the online media covering the products and service offerings.
“Goggles will recognize the print ad and return web search results about the product or brand,” Palm and Zhang wrote. “This new feature of Goggles is enabled for print ads appearing in major U.S. magazines and…