Pinterest and Google are somewhat similar. Of course, there is a huge and marked difference in how the companies operate, however, they have their similarities as well. Both include a robust and searchable database of images gathered from around the web. But, the former has just recently started increasing focus on its visual discovery tools and thus the highly important hire.
The company has today brought on board Randy Keller, a former Google executive who’d been leading the 40-member strong image search team for nearly ten years. His LinkedIn profile further adds that he was responsible for image search ranking, related images, guided search, and other emerging efforts. At Pinterest, he has now been appointed to a completely new position — head of
At Pinterest, he has now been appointed to a completely new position — head of search and will be reporting to Vanja Josifovski, a former Google executive and the head of discovery engineering. In a statement about his appointment, Keller says,
Pinterest is the most exciting opportunity in visual discovery today, and I look forward to contributing my expertise in image search quality and ranking to the team responsible for helping millions of people discovery billions of ideas every day. Pinterest’s unprecedented data set presents new opportunities to build the next generation of search that’s personalized to each person on Pinterest.
This development, initially reported by VentureBeat, comes on the heels of the recent launch of Lens feature, which facilitates image search through the live camera. This feature, currently available only on iOS, allows a user to point his/her camera towards any object — be it food, wearables, animals or geometric patterns, and instantly recognize what the same is.
The user then has the option to conduct an internet search related to that product. This feature goes beyond what’s currently possible with other image and object recognition applications by providing users an enhanced visual search experience. And Keller has now been brought into the mix to further perfect and advance these feature beyond their current existence. Pinterest is steadily planning to shed the image of being a “social scrapbook” and move on to become a full-fledged image search platform for the interwebs.
