Google Ready To Break Into Home Services Market With Homejoy

Google is looking to make a jump into the home services market and has hired the technical team from Homejoy, the startup that focused on connecting homeowners with home cleaners.

According to a Friday (July 17) report from Re/code, the search juggernaut is scooping up the Homejoy team as the latter shuts down at the end of July, having been the target of several employee reclassification lawsuits.

As noted by CNET on Friday, Homejoy said it would shut down amid the four suits over employee designations, and executives told the site that the suits made fundraising difficult.

And as Homejoy shuts its doors, 20 Homejoy professionals, spanning the company’s product and engineering departments, will be coming to Google. Google is looking to build out its technology geared toward matching professionals to the online users who want to hire them.

Google confirmed to Re/code that the tech professionals would be coming on board. And as had been noted, the startup had gotten $40 million in funding from a slew of investors that included Google Ventures.

Though the company would not confirm to Re/code who would be joining from Homejoy, it is likely they will be used to help further the company’s search functions. Positing how a search would look using Homejoy legacy knowledge, Re/code reported that a search for a cleaner would bypass third-party sites, instead putting options “directly into the top of results.”

As has been widely reported, Google is looking to move its search dominance into other markets covering services and hospitality. And last week the company said it has added mobile search functions to boost its retail presence, among other verticals.

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