Jul 18, 2011 15:21 GMT  ·  By

Google is always acquiring startups with talented teams or interesting products. Many times, especially for young companies, it does to get its hand on the team.

But the product does sometime get the center stage, even for smaller projects, like is the case of Punchd a loyalty reward web service which uses QR codes.

"We’re excited to announce that Punchd has been acquired by Google! We’ll be joining Google’s Mountain View teams, just down the street from our offices at 500 Startups, to improve how businesses and customers interact," Punchd announced last week.

The project is less than a year old, it started out as senior class project which led to a full-blown business, a successful one since it's been acquired by Google.

Punchd is simple in esence, users can scan a QR code, offered at partner shops and places, and then redeem a discount or free item as part of the loyalty program.

It's a take on the buy five, get one free type of offers, but with mobile phones rather than stickers. The idea is simple, but there's plenty of potential in the space.

What's interesting though is that it's based on QR codes rather than the new Google favorite NFC.

Google started out supporting QR technology, but early last year mostly deprecated the technology since it got behind NFC with its Android operating system and even its flagship phone, the Nexus S. In fact, the Nexus S is still pretty much the only phone with a NFC chip on the market.

The fact that Google acquired Punchd and has promised that the product will remain functional and that the team will continue to work at it seems to indicate that Google isn't giving up on QR yet.

Whether this is just until NFC starts to take hold, or it wants to convert the service to NFC remains to be seen, but, for now, Google is supporting both technologies again.