Last year, Google began adding 360 degree product views to Google Shopping ahead of the holiday season. This year, the search giant continued to tout the 360 views and have expanded from toys to other consumer products that consumers typically like to examine closely such as cameras. Users can move the images around to see all sides, top and bottom of a product and theoretically “feel as if they’re picking up products off the shelf”.
The company appears to have hired or be close to hiring a new partner technology manager for the program. A LinkedIn posting now states the job is no longer accepting applications. The person in this position will join the gTech Partner Solutions team which actually creates the images in-house, partnering with manufacturers who supply product samples for image capture. It’s quite an undertaking, scalability is part of the team’s focus according to the job description: “We also design and develop tools to scale partner onboarding process.”
Finding products with the 3D view is still tough, but presumably a good number of manufacturers are signed-on to the program. The sign-up for Google posted last year is now closed. We can expect Google to ramp this program as it continues to build up Google Shopping and take on the likes of Amazon for product search dominance.
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