Google and ShopSavvy
May 14, 2009
This afternoon the Google Product Search group released a new feature that called the Android barcode intent. Greg Kumparak over at TechCrunch predicted that they would include the intent a while back and he must have been psychic. Google’s product search features have been optimized for use on Android handsets and now Google has just revealed how Android might just be the killer phone operating system. Websites, like Google Product Search, can offer ‘intents’ that allow for interaction between websites and mobile applications.
While Google doesn’t have their own barcode application, Zxing has Barcode Scanner and we have ShopSavvy. Both can answer an intent published on a website. See below:
If you go to Google Product Search on an Android phone you can click ‘Scan Barcode’ and the browser will call Android asking for ‘barcode’ intents like Barcode Scanner and ShopSavvy. Just click on the one you prefer and presto you have launched a barcode reader. Barcode Scanner sends you to the Google Product Search page, ShopSavvy provides the same results only in a mobile UI (augmented with additional products not yet included in Google Product Search today). As Greg noted, “Google indicates that Product Search’s barcode index currently works best with electronics, books, movies and video games, though they promise to expand quickly.” To see the barcode intent in action watch the following video:
