eBay wants you to battle for holiday deals, but Watson knows your wish list
Tech Industry
Google makes it easier to shop on your phone, and IBM's Watson knows what's on your wish list this year.
I am Bridget Carey, this is your CNET update.
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When it comes to holiday shopping we're all tired of fighting the store crowds, so more people are shopping online during Black Friday weekend.
And Google is doing a few things to make shopping on your phone a smoother experience.
The Google search shopping section has been redesigned To help you narrow down options better.
And if you know what you want, like tricycles for kids, you can break down the search by features, brand and price.
And once you find the exact item you can dive deeper and see reviews.
Google also could help find which stores near you carry the item.
This is not an app it's all inside the browser, and of course Google rather have you spending more time inside Google search.
Because that's where it makes the most money from advertisements.
But even if you want to avoid in store fights Ebay is putting a virtual twist on the Black Friday battle.
Beginning at 4:00PM Eastern on Thanksgiving Day, eBay is making people vote on which of two items they'd rather see a sale for in the next hour, and the item with the most votes wins.
So at 6:00PM would you rather get 25% off a GoPro Hero4, or 18% off the low-end Apple watch?
The deal unlocks an hour later, and this voting process continues throughout the night with different pairings of products.
It's called the wish bigger wish bone.
Like a turkey wishbone, you pull two ways, but only one who cracks off the bigger piece gets their wish to come true.
If you're still trying to figure out what your loved ones are wishing for, just ask Watson.
IBM's Watson super computer has figured out what the hottest holiday gifts are gonna be this year.
And it's all searchable in a new IOS app called Watson Trend.
The Watson computer combed through 10,000 posts of social media sites.
Blogs, comments, ratings, and reviews, to pick out hot gifts.
And it can understand context and tone in our language.
To decipher our desires.
The app has apple watch as a top tech gift, followed by televisions.
And in the toy section star wars and legos are also hot.
I don't think you need to be a super computer to figure out apple and star wars are going to be hot this year.
But if you want to pay for those holiday gifts at the register with your smart phone there are more options than ever before, with apple pay, android pay, and Samsung pay.
Soon LG is gonna be part of the mix with LGPay.
The company announced it plants to launch an LGPay service, which will likely let you pay by waving your phone at a terminal.
Now, I don't expect it to be popular when you have Apple and Google already doing their own service with many established partners.
But so far, LG has partnered with two large Korean credit card companies and this week Apple Pay continues to expand to more countries.
You can now use Apple Pay in Canada and Australia but only, if you have an American Express card.
That's it for this tech news update and there's more in cnet.com from our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Carey.
