Mountain View, California — It appears that Internet search engine giant Google is on the verge of discussion to acquire visual search and e-commerce site Like.com for more than $100 million, according to a report in Techcrunch.
According to technology blog TechCrunch citing multiple sources, the deal is currently being hammered out, following aspate of social-media related acquisitions. The technology being targeted by Google is visual search — the remnants of a company that used to search for people by face called Riya.
Although so far it is still vague why Google is interested in Like.com, which has a visual search technology. Perhaps Google plans to try out with a new kind of search technology that appears to be getting traction.
As TechCrunch states, the site helps users to search for products based on a visual cue. For instance, users are able to highlight a product in an image form, then Like.com searches for products similar to the one in the image with the hope of finding an exact match.
If the deal goes through, which comes five years after Google nearly bought Riya, the company behind the technology used on Like.com, now the search engine titan is doling out $100 million to buy them a pretty powerful visual search engine, but Google has already been working on one of their own. If you have an Android device, you should be able to download Google Goggles — a visual search engine created by Google.
TechCrunch reports that Like.com has raised almost $50 million and began applying computer vision and learning technology to online fashion purchases. You can search for a red high-heeled pump on Like.com, and it will return a variety of applicable results to you. Like.com has also introduced Covet.com, Couturious.com and Weardrobe.com. Investors include Blue Run Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Bay Partners, Leapfrog Ventures, and Menlo Ventures.
Munjal Shah, chief executive of Like.com, declined to comment to Techcrunch. Like.com was founded by Shah and Burak Gokturk in August, 2004.
Similarly, Google has acquired a few different firms over the last month, as it reportedly gears-up to launch its own social networking site to rival Facebook. It has also placed a large investment of up to $US200 million in social gaming group Zynga.