Introducing Boutiques: a new way to shop for fashion online (opens in new tab)

(googleblog.blogspot.com)

18 pointsordinaryman15y ago24 comments

24 comments

Would guess it's based on their acquisition of http://www.like.com/

Edit: Yes, http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/81927/20101115/google-fashio... http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/15/google-to-enter-fashion-sho... http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/17/googles-boutiques-com...

antareus15y ago

Too bad there's no section for males. Clothes shopping is so hit-or-miss in department stores, especially if you know exactly what you want.

jaxn15y ago

I was really hoping they had men's suits. I wear a somewhat difficult to find suit size and would love for Google to provide me one place for OTR suits in my size.

bruceboughton15y ago

Is this the first Google property not to have their characteristic design?

gabea15y ago

I am really starting to believe that Google does not have any designers working for them. What is with the search engine like feel for a website that has to do with fashion?

I understand if you are just selling regular goods online, but for something that speaks to peoples eyes should there not be some decent aesthetics involved.

dsplittgerber15y ago

Have you actually clicked through to boutiques.com? It looks just like many other online fashion shops do.

mtsmith8515y ago

I would disagree ... Look at: http://jackthreads.com/ http://www.gilt.com/ or http://seshday.com/ I'd say that the majority of online fashion shops -- actual shops, not just a designer's site -- often have well designed, well thought out sites. Boutiques.com looks just like a very sterile, google site. No "fashion" at all.

(Disclosure: I work for Thrillist, the parent company of JackThreads. But I'm speaking for me and only me, in the comment above.)

gabea15y ago

Yes I did click through, but I still stand on my original comment. You would think that for Google being as massive as they are and for the unique fact that this is spun off without the word Google in front of the site name that they would spend some type of ample effort presenting a more eye pleasing site. My expectations for other online fashion shops are far less being that they are not Google.

andrenotgiant15y ago

Interestingly, the whole site is blocked from Search Engines with NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW tags.

I can imagine why they would block product pages, given that its basically an affiliate site, but even the homepage? Google sure is playing it safe.

lukeqsee15y ago

Has Google lost their focus?

Are they trying to be everything to everyone? It seems everything in the last two years has been unfocused, and consequently, ineffective. (Go is an exception.)

Do you agree?

prodigal_erik15y ago

At its heart, a corporation is just a pile of money that hires people to make itself bigger somehow. The expectation that it confine itself to a few related lines of business is a reaction to the fad in the 1960s of making leveraged buyouts of arbitrary companies to game the share price of the resulting conglomerate.

dagw15y ago

This is a search engine optimized for searching for a very specific type of information. Then they've tacked on a way to monetize those searches. What could be more 'core' to Google than that? As such it seems to be the most focused product they've released in a while.

jfarmer15y ago

Just so people understand, Google is not happy that sites like Sugar, Inc.'s http://www.shopstyle.com/ are taking a chunk of commerce search away from them.

I'm sure it's all the more frustrating when they're building ad networks on top of their vertical search engines, too: http://shopsense.shopstyle.com/

alexophile15y ago

This reminds me of Polyvore(http://polyvore.com/) - which has a few ex-googlers among their ranks. Most notably, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, their CEO (via Accel) was the president of Asian-Pacific and Latin American Markets.

robotron15y ago

If you have a vagina.

dagw15y ago

Sadly that seems to be the case. Unless I'm missing something there doesn't seem to be too much there for those of us with a penis. Seems like a bit of missed opportunity if you ask me.

yanw15y ago

At this time, Boutiques is only available in the U.S. and only for women’s fashion, but we plan to expand in the future

ovi25615y ago

I don't care if you're sexist, just keep it out of HN mkay ?

3/10, almost chuckled.

dagw15y ago

In what way was that sexist? As far as I can see there is no menswear section. The most you can accuse the original comment of is being insensitive to transvestites.

2 more replies

zachware15y ago

Are the product features 100% curated by humans/brands or is it pulling data feeds from Froogle (or whatever it's called now) and building outfits that way? Can't figure out the data?

phragg15y ago

this just shines light that anything in the string Google gets rushed to HN front page.

ill revisit when theres mens clothing

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

24 comments

zingo15y ago

Would guess it's based on their acquisition of http://www.like.com/

antareus15y ago

Too bad there's no section for males. Clothes shopping is so hit-or-miss in department stores, especially if you know exactly what you want.

jaxn15y ago

I was really hoping they had men's suits. I wear a somewhat difficult to find suit size and would love for Google to provide me one place for OTR suits in my size.

bruceboughton15y ago

Is this the first Google property not to have their characteristic design?

gabea15y ago

I am really starting to believe that Google does not have any designers working for them. What is with the search engine like feel for a website that has to do with fashion?

I understand if you are just selling regular goods online, but for something that speaks to peoples eyes should there not be some decent aesthetics involved.

dsplittgerber15y ago

Have you actually clicked through to boutiques.com? It looks just like many other online fashion shops do.

mtsmith8515y ago

(Disclosure: I work for Thrillist, the parent company of JackThreads. But I'm speaking for me and only me, in the comment above.)

gabea15y ago

andrenotgiant15y ago

Interestingly, the whole site is blocked from Search Engines with NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW tags.

I can imagine why they would block product pages, given that its basically an affiliate site, but even the homepage? Google sure is playing it safe.

lukeqsee15y ago

Has Google lost their focus?

Are they trying to be everything to everyone? It seems everything in the last two years has been unfocused, and consequently, ineffective. (Go is an exception.)

Do you agree?

prodigal_erik15y ago

dagw15y ago

jfarmer15y ago

Just so people understand, Google is not happy that sites like Sugar, Inc.'s http://www.shopstyle.com/ are taking a chunk of commerce search away from them.

I'm sure it's all the more frustrating when they're building ad networks on top of their vertical search engines, too: http://shopsense.shopstyle.com/

alexophile15y ago

robotron15y ago

If you have a vagina.

dagw15y ago

Sadly that seems to be the case. Unless I'm missing something there doesn't seem to be too much there for those of us with a penis. Seems like a bit of missed opportunity if you ask me.

yanw15y ago

At this time, Boutiques is only available in the U.S. and only for women’s fashion, but we plan to expand in the future

ovi25615y ago

I don't care if you're sexist, just keep it out of HN mkay ?

3/10, almost chuckled.

dagw15y ago

In what way was that sexist? As far as I can see there is no menswear section. The most you can accuse the original comment of is being insensitive to transvestites.

2 more replies

zachware15y ago

Are the product features 100% curated by humans/brands or is it pulling data feeds from Froogle (or whatever it's called now) and building outfits that way? Can't figure out the data?

phragg15y ago

this just shines light that anything in the string Google gets rushed to HN front page.

ill revisit when theres mens clothing

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse