Searching for that perfect holiday gift or the best deal this holiday season? Finding that special gift, let alone one at a great price during the holidays is hard. But this holiday season, finding a great deal can be as easy as asking a friend — you can do it right from your couch, without lifting a finger, literally. Just tell your Google Home, “Ask eBay...”
And in addition to snagging that perfect holiday deal, you can also find out what things lying around your house are worth, so you can turn them into cash and get something new right in time for that holiday shopping spree.
We are reimagining the shopping experience, using artificial intelligence to make it easier and more personalized. Starting today, we are bringing the best of eBay to your home with Google Assistant, making shopping as simple as having a conversation.
Using AI, we are able to create a truly personalized shopping experience inspired by the service you’d expect in a traditional retail setting. By combining eBay’s breadth of inventory and unique selection, the eBay Shopping Assistant can create a shopping experience for virtually everyone. This is the inspiration behind some of the exciting work we are doing at the intersection of artificial intelligence, cloud computing and a new commerce service that’s available wherever shoppers are.
Talk to eBay on Google Home
We’ve collaborated with Google to be among the first to take advantage of the multi-surface switching capability, which lets you carry a voice conversation on Google Home over to your phone, seamlessly. So when you tell Google Home that you want to buy an item on eBay, you can easily switch to your phone, take a peek at the deal recommendation to make sure everything is correct and buy with confidence.
The ability to switch from a voice platform like Google Home to your phone offers a convenient personal shopping experience that you can start in your kitchen, living room or your car and continue on your phone, wherever you are, whenever you need it.
We’ve also made updates to the What’s It Worth? experience on Google Assistant, so you can quickly find the value of your things to sell on eBay.
AI’s Potential to Transform Shopping
At eBay, we’ve developed some of the world’s most transformative and disruptive marketplace capabilities and commerce experiences. For over two decades, we’ve worked to make buying and selling effortless. As a result of these foundational ecommerce pillars, shoppers expect an experience nothing short of seamless. As we look to the future of shopping, powerful voice interfaces like Google Assistant will most certainly drive these experiences.
Natural language is rich with context and meaning. When paired with the science of understanding language, deep learning and predictive modeling, we can begin to harness the power of human intent, enabling us to create a radically better and more personalized shopping experience for everyone. As you develop a relationship with the eBay Shopping Assistant by giving more information about your preferences, you will be rewarded with a more tailored experience over time.
We are in the early stages of this new commerce frontier, but we are excited about the prospects of bringing the eBay shopping and selling experience closer to our customers’ everyday lives. AI has the potential to dramatically reshape online shopping with breakthrough merchandising and personalized shopping experiences. Paired with the power and reach of cloud computing, commerce can take place where and when you want it. And, when combined with eBay’s inventory and knowledge base, we see something really exciting and transformative: online shopping will be as easy as talking to a friend.
Google Assistant is available on your Google Home, Home Mini devices, as well as via Google Assistant apps on Android and iOS. You can talk to eBay on Google Assistant, including Google Home, in the U.S. and Australia, just by saying “Hey Google, ask eBay.”
BIO
Jay Vasudevan is a Lead Product Manager at eBay, where he and his team focus on AI-augmented shopping assistants to offer a truly ubiquitous personal shopping experience.