Google Eyes At ‘Home Services’ Segment; Hires 20 Engineers From Homejoy

Google has developed its interest in another segment i.e Home service. For this purpose, the search engine giant hired 20 employees from the technical wing of Homejoy, the startup that connected online users with professional cleaners.

Owing to multiple employee reclassification lawsuits, Homejoy will close its operations at the end of this month. The 20 employees hired from the startup’s product and engineering team will now work with Google to develop the company’s technology to connect local professionals like lawn mowers, painters, plumbers, cleaners and others with online users who seek these professionals to get some home services done, reports Re/Code.

Google’s new Home service will reportedly introduce online users with various handymen, who would have posted their schedules to the service, after which users just have to sign up to fix up an appointment online. Homejoy generated revenue by charging a percentage of each transaction that it had established between a customer and home service professional. The business idea is similar to Angie’s list, which too offered the same service. Homejoy had raised over $40 million in funding from investors, including Google Ventures, according to a report on 9 to 5 Google, which mentioned that the date of launch of the service is still unknown.

Earlier this year, Amazon has also launched a web portal for home services, wherein, it has partnered with startups and service providers, namely, TaskRabbit and Pep Boys, according to the Re/Code report.

The possibility of integrating the feature into the company’s search platform could also be considered by Google. Recently, Google announced a feature called “Purchases on Google”, which will allow shoppers to purchase products directly from mobile search ads. Google is testing the new feature with select retailers and plans to make it available to advertisers in the US by late 2015 or early 2016, reported Tech Crunch. While Google was planning on its “Buy Button” initiative, it was considered to possess great potential to give tough competition to e-commerce giants.

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