Google has enabled new shoppable visual search features in time for the holidays, according to chain storage.

Google, which initially began connecting its lens image recognition tool to shopping activities in 2021, is now releasing several new e commerce features for Google lens users in reaction to data which indicates 20% of all Google Lens searches are shopping related.

Wow.

Starting Friday, October 4 for Android and iOS devices in select countries, Lens is prominently displaying key information when it identifies the product in a user's photo.

This means, Anne, a consumer can tap the lens icon in the search bar and snap or upload a photo to instantly see details like price across retailers, current deals, product reviews, and where to buy in one place.

In addition, a new feature called circle to search.

Yep, I like the sound of that.

Lets lens users move from browsing the web, watching videos or scrolling social media into image based shopping without switching apps.

Consumers can long press the home button or navigation bar on select Android devices, then circle, scribble or tap a product on the screen to find similar options, and then add finally, there's a lot.

Going on because I know you want more.

Yes, I know how big of a fan.

If it has to do with Google lens.

I know.

Yes.

Okay.

And finally, lens also now makes it possible to search with text and images at the same time.

For example, Anne, you could take a photo of a chair with lens and add words to narrow your search like brown or velvet.

Because who doesn't want to ask themselves in velvet?

And for all you Seinfeld fans out there, so my question to you is this.

You are the biggest visual search fangirl that I know.

Absolutely.

Will this change how you shop for your friends and family and even for yourself this coming holiday?

Last week you talked about your headline of the year.

This might be one of my contestants in the running for headline of the year because especially this, like last couple days at grocery shop, I am shocked at how many companies that I've talked to here.

How many retailers, from club retailers to grocery retailers are starting to change the way that we search for product?

I mean, I think you ask how many people have gone on to Amazon or who have searched a question on Google recently and you get Gemini's results.

It's already training us.

And for me personally, I think surprisingly how quickly I'm getting used to expecting that quick search results.

The same way that I would go into a store and ask an associate in the store a question and I'm not getting served 5000 different products.

When I search for coffee makers like Paymin Najati from own it, he does a really good job of explaining like what if you went into a best Buy store and you said, I'd like to know about your coffee makers.

And the associate just showed you 3000 coffee makers and was like, good luck, goodbye, see you later.

That's not going to happen.

Figure it out for yourself.

And so what I love about what Google lens is doing here is that it's like making search so much simpler and it's really capitalizing on how I think we're going to start to search differently as consumers and retailers are getting the punchline to the joke because everybody's starting to explore this in one way or another because it does simplify the online search process.

I mean, come on.

Can you imagine if I was like, took a picture of your jacket, like, I'm going to do it today at the airport.

Like I took a picture of some woman's purse last night at dinner and I was like, ooh, I wonder who makes that bag.

Visual search.

Pull it up.

I want to know if they have that in red.

And then it's searching the entire database, which is the second part of it.

It's not just Amazon search now where you're getting the products on Amazon.

It's everything in the Google universe that you're shopping.

And that's the other key part of this that I think is so remarkable.

Right, right, right.

Yes.

You are the biggest Google lens fan there is.

But talk to me about it after the podcast, people.

So headline of the year, huh?

That's how big you think this is?

I think it's major.

Okay.

I would say more, the more the change to how we as consumers search for products being the like subtext.

I don't know if I'm there with you on that because, you know, visual search, you and I've been talking about it for a long time.

But the last point is what was really interesting to me, what you said, because we talk all the time on the show about the battle between Amazon and Walmart, and Jason Del Rey wrote a whole book on that topic.

Right.

And you even alluded to it in one of the previous headlines.

But the real battle when it comes to digital commerce is still between Google and Amazon, you know, here in the US particularly.

And TikTok is closing in on that too, to some degree.

YouTube, yeah, but Google.

But I think it was funny that Amazon also, if you remember earlier in the week, announced what was basically a virtual carbon copy of these same features.

I don't think they called it circle with search or whatever the hell it.

Was called, but it was like maybe something like that, Rufus's microscope or something.

Rufus laps it up or something.

I don't know.

But, but, so, but then when you get to, when you start thinking long term again, 1015 year horizon, who wins?

I feel like Amazon gets left holding the bag on this because Google has so much more information available about commerce, about pricing, about where you can get things than Amazon does, that you wonder if over time more of the volume doesn't migrate towards them or through them to other retailers than Amazon.

So I don't like, so net.

Net.

I mean, two headlines here.

I don't necessarily like the position of Amazon in grocery and in the realm of ongoing search too.

Right.

I mean, they've been leading for so long, it's, people are catching up now.

I think the last thing I would say though, too, Chris, is again, this is all dependent on how much the retailers are investing in this too, from their side of things.

I mean, I think the experience of Google lens is only as good as the products that are served up when you do that.

Yeah.

You can only find that bag if it's available online with the picture.

Exactly.

So I think that's the other part of this too, where we're really going to have to start to see manufacturers and retailers start to work together really closely to make sure that their products are being served up in the right way.