Google Cloud Launches Product Discovery Solutions for Retail, Bolstering Personalized Online Shopping

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jan. 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Google Cloud today announced the launch of Product Discovery Solutions for Retail, a suite of solutions built to help retailers around the globe enhance their ecommerce capabilities and deliver highly personalized consumer experiences in the first phase of their shopping journeys. With Google Cloud's Product Discovery Solutions for Retail, retailers can implement seamless search and recommendation capabilities that enhance consumer engagement and improve conversions across retailers' own digital properties.

The global retail industry, which has grappled with the shift to online shopping for a decade, is now facing one of its most unpredictable periods to date, as businesses adapt to COVID-19. As more shopping accelerates online, retailers are facing pressure to prioritize ecommerce improvements that enhance the entire consumer shopping journey, while also driving bottom-line sales for their businesses.

"As the shift to online continues, smarter and more personalized shopping experiences will be even more critical for retailers to rise above their competition," said Carrie Tharp, vice president of retail and consumer at Google Cloud. "Retailers are in dire need of agile operating models powered by cloud infrastructure and technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to meet today's industry demands. We're proud to partner with retailers around the world, and bring forward our Product Discovery offerings to help them succeed."

In collaboration with some of the world's leading retailers—and leveraging Google's semantic understanding of online search and user intent—Google Cloud's Product Discovery Solutions for Retail bring together state-of-the-art AI algorithms with the highly scalable infrastructure of Google Cloud. Google Cloud's Product Discovery Solutions for Retail include:

• Now Generally Available, Recommendations AI enables retailers to deliver highly personalized product recommendations at scale and across all channels. The solution is able to piece together the history of a customer's shopping journey and serve them with customized product recommendations. Recommendations AI uses Google Cloud's latest machine-learning architectures, so retailers can dynamically adapt to real-time user behavior and changes, accounting for variables like assortment and pricing, to ensure an unfractured shopping experience. 
• Vision API Product Search allows retailers to adapt to how today's consumers are finding product inspiration and discovery whether that happens from retailer specific websites or on any social media platforms. Vision API Product Search allows shoppers to search for products with an image and receive a ranked list of visually and semantically similar items. Vision Product Search uses ML-powered object recognition and lookup to provide real-time results of similar, or complementary, items from retailers' product catalog. Google Cloud Vision API Product Search is Generally Available to all companies.
• Google Cloud Search for Retail, available in Private Preview, pulls from Google's deep understanding of user intent and context to provide retailers with high-quality product search functionality that can be embedded into their websites and mobile applications. Retailers benefit from Google's advanced search capabilities to provide intuitive search functionalities that are configurable to meet the specific needs of each retail organization. With Google Cloud Search for Retail, retailers can ensure their shoppers find exactly what they're looking for at every step of their shopping journeys.

Availability & Getting Started
Today, Recommendations AI and Vision API Product Search are Generally Available to all companies. Google Cloud Search for Retail is in Private Preview. If companies are interested in Google Cloud Search for Retail, please contact a sales representative. To learn more about these solutions, visit Google Cloud's Product Discovery Solutions for Retail page here.

About Google Cloud
Google Cloud provides organizations with leading infrastructure, platform capabilities and industry solutions. We deliver enterprise-grade cloud solutions that leverage Google's cutting-edge technology to help companies operate more efficiently and adapt to changing needs, giving customers a foundation for the future. Customers in more than 150 countries turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to solve their most critical business problems.

SOURCE Google Cloud