The Android application helps shoppers find product information quickly by using a phone’s camera. It can recognize cover art of books, CDs, DVDs and video games, along with most bar codes. Consumers can also speak the name of the product they are looking for.

“Use Shopper to make smart decisions about what to buy, what price to pay, and where to buy it,” said Daniel Switkin and Farhan Shamsi, software engineers at Google, Mountain View, CA, in a blog post.

“You can star items for later and share them with friends,” they said. “Shopper also saves your history so you’ll always have product and price information at your fingertips, even when you don’t have a signal.”

Here’s an example search based on the Effective Java: Programming Language Guide.

Here is a demo of the Google Shopper application: