Google Cloud Vision API Product Search vs Google Lens

Google Cloud Vision API Product Search lets retailers build catalogs from products and reference images, organize them into product sets, and find visually or semantically similar items from query images. Supported categories include homegoods, apparel, toys, packaged goods, and general. Query images can come from Google Cloud Storage, a web URL, or a base64 string. Optional product-label filters support AND or OR expressions under documented rules. Calls are available through REST, RPC, and Google Cloud client libraries, while CSV import can create product sets, products, and reference images in bulk. The free plan covers prediction and storage for 0–1,000 images monthly. Listed paid storage starts at $0.10 per 1,000 images; prediction is $4.50 or $1.80 per 1,000 at higher tiers. Index updates occur approximately daily. Limits include 20 MB images, 10 MB JSON objects, and 16 images per request.

Google Lens is a visual search tool that works from a camera, image or screenshot. It can identify plants and animals, and provide information about artwork, murals and landmarks. For shopping, Lens can find a pictured item's maker, price and sellers, with refinements for patterns, colors and sizes. It can translate text in over 100 languages and copy text to a phone or computer. In the Google app, users can ask questions about what they see and find homework explainers, videos and web results across subjects including math, history, chemistry, biology and physics. Lens in desktop Chrome lets users select web content, search it and ask questions without leaving the tab. That page-search feature requires Google as the default search engine; Google says it sends a screenshot and page data when used. Lens is available on Android, iOS, macOS, web and Windows, and is listed as free.