After a week of unconfirmed messages, announced the visual search service Like.com Friday that it has been bought by Google.
- We are pleased and excited to welcome Like.com Google, where they will work with our commercial team, "said a spokesman at Google eWeek.
- While Like.com will operate their websites separately in the short term, we are excited about the technology they have built and domain expertise they will bring to Google for each as we continue to build great e-commerce experience for users, advertisers and partners, "said Google's spokesperson.
Like.com was previously operated by the company Riya, which Google considering buying as early as 2005, but turned thumbs down. Riya was working then with technologies such as facial recognition. Riya was laid in 2009, but re-emerged soon as Like.com, and were now focusing on e-commerce based on Riyas core technology that enables users to search for images visually similar to each other.
Some of the original thinking was that users could choose a picture of such a person and then use technology to find out what kind of shoes or watch the person is wearing, using image recognition technologies.
