Google likes Like.com, buys visual search team

Google has snapped up Like.com, the start-up announced Friday, as Google puts its product-shopping search strategy on the front burner.

Techcrunch, which reported a deal was in progress earlier in the week, said the official deal could be for as much as $100 million. "We were the first to bring visual search to shopping, the first to build an automated cross-matching system for clothing, and more. We see joining Google as a way to supersize our vision and supercharge our passion," said Munjal Shah, co-founder and CEO, in a statement posted on Like.com's home page.

Like.com operates a shopping Web site organized around visual search, and it will fit right into Google's plans to build out its product search features ahead of this year's holiday shopping season. Google has also shown an interest in the core of Like.com's technology--training computers to recognize objects independently--and could find uses for its technology in Google Image Search.