Google has bought Santa Monica-based mobile photo-recognition software firm Neven Vision, in an attempt to incorporate it into its Picasa photo software. Its technology will be used to better enable search within photos…this comes after rumors earlier this year of Google buying another younger startup Riya, with similar technology.
From Google’s own blog: “Neven Vision comes to Google with deep technology and expertise around automatically extracting information from a photo. It could be as simple as detecting whether or not a photo contains a person, or, one day, as complex as recognizing people, places, and objects. This technology just may make it a lot easier for you to organize and find the photos you care about.”
Gigaom: Neven was founded about 10 years ago as a biometrics company but in the last few years changed its focus to mobile visual search. Customers include NTT DoCoMo (for authenticating transactions), the U.S. government (including the LAPD for identifying gang members), and Coca-Cola (for mobile marketing campaigns). Investors include Anthem Venture Partners and Zone Ventures.