San Francisco -- Google has spent the last 12 years crushing the competition to become the world's go-to search engine. Now it's venturing into far less precise territory: the psyche of the female shopper. Quietly, in its Mountain View atelier, the company has been designing a new site that uses highly sophisticated visual search and personalization algorithms, fashion archetypes, and hand-selected choices from style mavens to cut the vast world of fashion down to size. The result, Boutiques.com, celebrated its beta launch Nov. 10 in New York with a big party, an A-list fashion crowd and the fanfare usually reserved for ready-to-wear shows. 'The goal was to create a whole new way to shop,' said Munjal Shah, director of product management at Google, who heads the Boutiques.com team. 'We saw all these pieces, but we didn't see anybody else who'd put it all together.' Shah should know. The site's underlying visual search technology comes from Like.com, which he co-founded in 2004. Google approached Like.com to figure out a way to sell 'soft goods' -- apparel, accessories and shoes, a $25 billion category -- and acquired the company for a reported $100 million in August. In an interview and online demonstration of Boutiques.com, Shah said his company had been 'working on creating the next generation' of personal shopping sites for the past year and a half by refining what Like.com had learned with its earlier sites, Covet, Wearable and Couturious.com. 'Google actually saw a demo of this product, and it's part of what got them excited,' Shah said. Like.com is just one of Google's pioneering neighbors that have helped define the online shopping experience. Others include eBay, which boasts a $5.4 billion global marketplace that connects 10 million buyers with sellers; San Francisco's ShopStyle, which streamlines the process of browsing and buying better-quality merchandise for 6 million monthly visitors, and Mountain View's Polyvore, where 1 million members create collages that are viewed by millions more Web surfers each month. More flash sale sites and mobile applications emerge every day, making it possible for shoppers to browse, buy and share their finds without setting foot in a brick-and-mortar store, or looking up from their phones. Suddenly, fashion has become less elite, more approachable and downright democratic, as users' preferences are tracked and analyzed. To grasp how this all works, think of the concepts of editing and curating, adopted from publishing and art but now used constantly in the fashion world to imply judgment, taste and discernment. Whereas department store buyers and New York fashion editors were the traditional arbiters of what was fashionable, now anyone can be a 'curator' -- from 14-year-old bloggers and reality TV personalities to everyone willing to invest the time to take Boutiques.com's 'Stylzer' quiz, which -- heavy on visual search technology -- offers pictures of various fashions to determine users' favorite styles, and asks them to refine their choices by checking 'love' or 'hate' for each item. E-commerce sites are increasingly downplaying the warehouse approach for this more personally themed 'curated experience.' Boutiques.com hedges its bets by calling its startup stable of fashion designers, celebrities, bloggers and retailers who stock their own boutiques 'tastemakers.' If a $1,600 Marc Jacobs skirt isn't in your budget, the site gives shoppers a list of similar items determined by algorithms that crunch both visual cues and fashion rules. Images from Polyvore and street fashion site Lookbook.nu have also been analyzed for matches, and provide further guidance on how to wear that asymmetrical top or yellow stilettos. Executives from some fashion sites were circumspect about Google's new effort. 'It just shows that there's tremendous opportunity for online shopping and online fashion,' said Melissa Davis, vice president of marketing and business development for ShopStyle. 'I think it looks like a great site, definitely an interesting take, with the celebrities and curated boutiques. I will be interested to see where it goes from here.' EBay's new general manager of Fashion.ebay.com, Miriam Lahage, said the company watches the industry closely, but 'We don't view (Google) as competition because our models are so different.' A key difference, she said, is that eBay is a 'matchmaker' rather than a retailer. 'Our customer has been telling us for awhile she wants to buy fashion on eBay.' In response, the company created its dedicated eBay fashion site in April with a staff of former department and specialty store buyers; art directors and designers; stylists; public relations specialists and business developers in San Jose, New York, London and Berlin. Features include Fashion Vault, which offers 60-hour sales and discounts; Lookbook, a digital gallery of real people wearing looks put together by themselves or with eBay stylists, and the ability to create and customize 'shopping profiles' for women's and men's styles. A spring 2011 collaboration with designer Derek Lam will let users vote on their favorite designs, which he will then produce and sell exclusively on eBay. 'We have a winning formula to introduce some carefully selected content with an easier way to shop using technology and the biggest selection of value-priced merchandise with brands that they'll ever find,' Lahage said. Third-quarter fashion gross merchandise value was up 8 percent this year, to $1.198 billion, according to eBay. Jess Lee, vice president of product management at Polyvore, says she has high hopes for Boutiques.com, but even higher expectations for Polyvore, which on Monday introduced its first design challenge: Creating a clutch bag for independent accessories designer Rebecca Minkoff's spring line, to be featured at Fashion Week in New York. The point, she said, is to 'democratize fashion.' The site's biggest challenge, for Victoria's Secret Pink, drew 13,000 entries and 4.7 million votes on Facebook, Lee said. That passion for fashion from Polyvore's 2 million 'stylemakers' produces a gold mine of data that are increasingly valuable to designers and brands. Polyvore, which became profitable this year, will release an analytic tool soon to help companies with trends and branding. About Boutiques.com, Lee said, 'The big question is: Can taste be defined by an algorithm and search parameters, or is it more intangible, more whimsical -- something that can only be captured by humans? Inspiration and self-expression are a huge part of fashion and taste, and Polyvore's really good at capturing that.' Meanwhile, Shah is confident that Boutiques.com is on the right track, citing the 'multidisciplinary nature' of its team of 50 Stanford-trained engineers and fashion and design school graduates who successfully melded both right- and left-brain thinking for this project. 'You can't create a great personalization engine unless you categorize the items in all of these dimensions,' he said. 'But in fashion, tastemakers really matter.' A HIGHLY SELECTIVE FASHION SITE TIMELINE 1995: EBay pioneers the online auction business in San Jose, eventually becoming 'the world's largest online marketplace.' June 2000: Net-a-Porter debuts with a design that mimics fashion magazines. Tagline: 'The world's premier luxury online fashion destination.' Based in London. Fall 2005: Shop It To Me, founded by Charlie Graham as 'a free online personal shopper for clothing sales.' It combs listings from 700 participating brands and merchants and delivers daily e-mails about sales based on users' preferences to its 2 million subscribers. Based in San Francisco. February 2007: ShopStyle debuts as 'the first and only search engine devoted to fashion.' About 6 million unique visitors; 25 million-plus page views a month. Part of the PopSugar fashion, beauty and shopping network of Sugar Inc. Based in San Francisco. 2007: Polyvore founded by three male engineers. Tagline: 'The leading community site for online style where users are empowered to discover their style and set trends around the world.' About 6.5 million unique visitors a month, 2 million registered members and 1 million sets per month. Based in Mountain View. April 2008: Moxsie founded by Catalina Girald to create an online shop for cutting-edge fashion. Tagline: 'Discover independent fashion.' Based in Palo Alto. April 2010: EBay creates Fashion.ebay. Tagline: 'Your destination for clothing, shoes & accessories on eBay.' 