If you’re like me, you probably use your iphone/android/whatever phone camera as a visual journal. Certainly I shoot creative photos with it, but I’m also constantly generating snapshots of things I like, patterns, ideas, magazine covers, ads, and other stuff that act as inspiration or reminders for me to check out something in greater detail later when I’ve got more time.
Well, Google’s new-ish app “Google Goggles” capitalizes on this. Snap a photo, do a search with that photo as the input, and get results. I’m only just starting to play with it, but Google claims that in addition to text the app recognizes landmarks, books, wine, artwork, logos and more.
And, since I shoot a lot of advertising imagery, what really got my attention was when they recently announced advertising partnership “tests” with Disney, Buick, Delta, T-Mobile and Diageo. Use the app to snap a photo of certain enabled print adverts in a magazine, billboard, or whatever–hit “go”– and you’re suddenly immersed in a rich media experience with results galore to explore.
If this is the case, how soon will it be that all your images will be recognizable by visual search rather than simply the Google Goggle enabled campaigns, or the metadata attached to the image. Or even cooler, when your un-tagged images have been sniffed and are returned in search based on their pixel content. Will a search for “Toyota” soon return this image of mine, will a search for “diabetes” return this one, or perhaps even a search for “women’s underwear” might soon return even this one? I’m banking that it won’t be long.
I think my mind just exploded.
A couple videos about how Google Goggles works, plus a link to download the apps and find out more after the jump. Hit ‘continue reading’ below.
This vid is the original one about the basic functionality
This vid is the one that really got my attention, where Google announces it broadened effectiveness in partnerships with a handful of print advertisers.
Get the Google Goggles app for iPhone, Android, and find out more here.
It is pretty impressive. I have used it on some things and it works pretty good.
I just wonder about the accuracy of it. You see a lot of 2D bar codes (QR, Microsoft Tag) now in adds and i think these provide a more reliable experience.
Agree. It’s more convenient to implement bar codes than use Goggles, And until now, I still can’t find goggles on app store.
Is it available for the iPhone? I can’t seem to find it. 🙁
indeed. there’s something magical and beautiful about it.
so simple but so complex. that’s the whole mind blowing thing i meant in the post…
That surely is most amazing. It won’t be long before we don’t have to tag the images we put on our websites for google to find out what is in our shots.
That is some pretty amazing stuff right there!