Google Inc is launching a service that lets consumers pay for live video chats with experts who can provide everything from step-by-step turkey cooking instructions to marriage counseling

November 5, 2013 Leave a comment

Updated: Tuesday November 5, 2013 MYT 2:49:25 PM

Google offers live video chats on range of topics with new service

SAN FRANCISCO: Google Inc is launching a service that lets consumers pay for live video chats with experts who can provide everything from step-by-step turkey cooking instructions to marriage counseling. The Google Helpouts service, introduced on Monday, features roughly 1,000 partners in fashion, fitness, computers and other topics, available for live, one-on-one video consultations. The video sessions can be as short as a few minutes or can last several hours, depending on the topic, with pricing set by each individual provider.The video consultations represent an expansion of Google’s traditional Web search service, which for years has answered consumers’ questions by pointing people to the most appropriate Web page.

While Google remains the world’s No.1 Internet search engine, consumers are increasingly turning to social networks like Facebook Inc to get advice and recommendations from their friends about movies, restaurants and other topics.

“Most of the world’s useful information still resides in people’s heads,” Udi Manber, vice president of engineering at Google said at a small briefing with reporters in San Francisco on Monday. Helpouts “opens the door to that information as well.”

Manber said that Google will initially provide tight oversight of the Helpouts website, deciding which types of services can be offered on Helpouts. For providers of medical consultations, Google will conduct background checks to ensure that the provider has valid credentials.

In addition to individual experts, large brands such as Sephora, Weight Watchers and Rosetta Stone will also be offering video sessions on the Helpouts service.

Google will take 20 percent of the fee that the providers collect from consumers for the video chats, though Google is initially waving the transaction fee for providers in the Health category.

Consumers can leave reviews of the different video chat experts and Google will refund consumers who are not satisfied with their video consultation, the company said. – Reuters

Filed under TMT Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment