Google Helpouts Offer Advice On The Go

You’re out shopping and you want some advice or help with buying a particular item. Sure, you can ask the shop assistant, but considering their job is to part you with your hard-earned cash, their input would hardly be unbiased. Enter Google Helpouts. Helpouts is like a virtual expert experience that you can hook into when at the local mall or specialty shop. 

 

By Mike Wheeler

You’re out shopping and you want some advice or help with buying a particular item. Sure, you can ask the shop assistant, but considering their job is to part you with your hard-earned cash, their input would hardly be unbiased. Enter Google Helpouts.

Helpouts is like a virtual expert experience that you can hook into when at the local mall or specialty shop. Helpouts sells advice from a range of products and services from cosmetics through to health care specialists.

Google says the advice can be streamed via smartphones and computers, and that there are already 1000 merchants, websites and specialists signed up, and have been cleared via the company’s background checks.

Google knows that people will its search engine to find information and advice, but felt that sometimes the results were less than satisfactory and feels that this service will fill that gap.

And the cost of the service? Each expert will set their own price, and unsurprisingly Google will net 20 percent of the fees for video session (with the exception of health advice). Also, before the cynic in all of us kicks in about Helpouts being just about raising revenue, Google has said that if the advice is not good or unsatisfactory, then they will refund peoples’ money.

You will need a Google+ account to activate Helpouts, and the service is only available with devices running Android software.