Algolia vs Google Retail Discovery AI
How does Algolia compare with Google Retail Discovery AI? Here’s a brief overview of the two businesses side by side.
Overview
Google has a history of site-search products that it launched and later abandoned — Google Custom Search Engine (GSCE), Google Search Appliance (GSA), Google Site Search (GSS), and Google Programmable Search Engine to name a few. Now they have released several new retail-specific search solutions, including Google for Retail and Retail Discovery AI for on-site product search. At Algolia, we've been 100% focused on-site search since day 1 for the past 10+ years.
API-first end to end A Search & Discovery for product and full-size search
Usage pricing with pay-as-you-go and enterprise
17,000+ customers supporting over 1.5 trillion searches a year - rare 99.999% availability SLA with customers WW
Google Retail Discovery AI
Offers multiple products to support retailers for internet and on-site product search
Add on to Google Cloud - ability is support scale, performance, and relevance for site search consistently for the enterprise customers is unknown at this time
Google retail search has less than 100 customers; nobody has used it for more than 1 year
Search & Use of AI
Although Google was an early pioneer in AI, newer businesses have pushed above and beyond Google’s AI capabilities. At Algolia, we have developed end-to-end search specifically to meet the needs of businesses for site and API-based search applications at any scale.
AI-native NeuralSearch with end-to-end AI processing with both keywords and vectors ensuring the most relevant results at scale
AI-powered query categorization, recommendations, and personalization boosted by industry’s only AI powered automatic query categorization
While Google has vector solutions, nobody EXCEPT Algolia has been able to do this at scale while keeping the costs at keyword level for realistic enterprise-wide applications as well as complexity levels to a minimum for broader adoption
Google Retail Discovery AI
Not designed for a holistic ecommerce buyer journey/experience as they do not serve federated search content
Complex setup (VPC) with high cost to work with data outside of Google cloud (not federated)
Uses Approximate Nearest Neighbor (ANN) with asymmetric hashes for encryption. Searching through vectors using ANN is much more expensive (through the tree structure vs. relational db model). Memory intensive high latency query processing is especially troublesome for high volume or frequent updates
Deployment
Google Retail search is a merge of APIs using Google Cloud, their retail API and data sitting within Google Retail to form a solution aimed at improving product discovery. Algolia can be deployed in minutes via simple configuration options or an API.
Self-service, faster time to value with dozens of pre-built, configurable front-end widgets for fast deployment
Extensive dev support to build: <12 weeks to go live
Easy to use UX/UI widgets and front-end library to custom-make any end-user experience in minutes
Transparent, simple pricing
Google Retail Discovery AI
Slower time to value; UX/UI needs heavy dev load; minimal front-end libraries
GRS can take up to 12 weeks for just backward readiness, more months to go live
Cloud platform pricing based on queries, API calls, prediction requests, and more
Usability
After being deployed, Algolia is built for anyone — technical or non-technical users — to run, configure, and manage results. Google Retail Discovery AI is built only for engineers.
API-first to work in any environment, different-use cases
Built for speed and hyper-scalability with results optimized for each customer
Allows for multiple indexes which can be searched (federated) at once
Designed for both business and technical users with no code drag and drop environments
Google Retail Discovery AI
API-first with various language libraries
Very scalable on Google Cloud; but not efficient outside of Google environment (in contrast, Algolia operates equally efficiently in all public cloud environments)
Designed for technical users only; no business dashboards or no-code merchandising - needs heavy dev workload from dev with minimal front-end library support provided
Merchandising
Algolia Merchandising Studio is a free application that gives merchandisers the power to easily manage and curate campaigns. Google doesn’t offer anything similar.
Free Merchandising Studio designed for merchandisers to build custom campaigns and ease of use
Full-control over search results and catalog listings
Ability to create rules or manually pin results — no-code required
Google Retail Discovery AI
No direct merchandising capabilities
Google Merchant Center for displaying results on Google’s internet search
Boosting and filtering capabilities to promote products built for engineers
Overview
Google has a history of site-search products that it launched and later abandoned — Google Custom Search Engine (GSCE), Google Search Appliance (GSA), Google Site Search (GSS), and Google Programmable Search Engine to name a few. Now they have released several new retail-specific search solutions, including Google for Retail and Retail Discovery AI for on-site product search. At Algolia, we've been 100% focused on-site search since day 1 for the past 10+ years.
API-first end to end A Search & Discovery for product and full-size search
Usage pricing with pay-as-you-go and enterprise
17,000+ customers supporting over 1.5 trillion searches a year - rare 99.999% availability SLA with customers WW
Google Retail Discovery AI
Offers multiple products to support retailers for internet and on-site product search
Add on to Google Cloud - ability is support scale, performance, and relevance for site search consistently for the enterprise customers is unknown at this time
Google retail search has less than 100 customers; nobody has used it for more than 1 year
AI-native NeuralSearch with end-to-end AI processing with both keywords and vectors ensuring the most relevant results at scale
AI-powered query categorization, recommendations, and personalization boosted by industry’s only AI powered automatic query categorization
While Google has vector solutions, nobody EXCEPT Algolia has been able to do this at scale while keeping the costs at keyword level for realistic enterprise-wide applications as well as complexity levels to a minimum for broader adoption
Google Retail Discovery AI
Not designed for a holistic ecommerce buyer journey/experience as they do not serve federated search content
Complex setup (VPC) with high cost to work with data outside of Google cloud (not federated)
Uses Approximate Nearest Neighbor (ANN) with asymmetric hashes for encryption. Searching through vectors using ANN is much more expensive (through the tree structure vs. relational db model). Memory intensive high latency query processing is especially troublesome for high volume or frequent updates
Self-service, faster time to value with dozens of pre-built, configurable front-end widgets for fast deployment
Extensive dev support to build: <12 weeks to go live
Easy to use UX/UI widgets and front-end library to custom-make any end-user experience in minutes
Transparent, simple pricing
Google Retail Discovery AI
Slower time to value; UX/UI needs heavy dev load; minimal front-end libraries
GRS can take up to 12 weeks for just backward readiness, more months to go live
Cloud platform pricing based on queries, API calls, prediction requests, and more
API-first to work in any environment, different-use cases
Built for speed and hyper-scalability with results optimized for each customer
Allows for multiple indexes which can be searched (federated) at once
Designed for both business and technical users with no code drag and drop environments
Google Retail Discovery AI
API-first with various language libraries
Very scalable on Google Cloud; but not efficient outside of Google environment (in contrast, Algolia operates equally efficiently in all public cloud environments)
Designed for technical users only; no business dashboards or no-code merchandising - needs heavy dev workload from dev with minimal front-end library support provided
Free Merchandising Studio designed for merchandisers to build custom campaigns and ease of use
Full-control over search results and catalog listings
Ability to create rules or manually pin results — no-code required
Google Retail Discovery AI
No direct merchandising capabilities
Google Merchant Center for displaying results on Google’s internet search
Boosting and filtering capabilities to promote products built for engineers