14 DAY TRIAL // Google Goggles is one of the most interesting search technologies coming from Google and this is a company that specializes in search products. Still, visual search and image recognition is proving quite a challenge even for Mountain View's best and brightest.
Progress is being made and Google is working on getting Goggles on more mobile devices besides its own Android platform. The most obvious target is the iPhone and Google says that a native iPhone app is coming by the end of the year.
And yes, it's going to be a regular app, Google can't go the web route with Goggles just yet, despite its general preference for web-based apps. HTML5 is not capable of the direct hardware access Goggles needs.
David Petrou, staff engineer at Google Labs, speaking at the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University, talked about the challenges of creating a visual search tool.
Google Goggles is an easy sell, the app aims to make it possible for users to search for anything using their phones' cameras. Snap a picture of a landmark, a restaurant, a piece of text, a car, anything and Google Goggles will try to get you information on it.
The idea sounds great on paper, but making it work is not so simple. At this point, about one in three searches recognize the object users want identified or more info on. While it's impressive for any application to achieve even this, it's not enough to make it a must-have tool for most people.
But the technology is improving and, given enough time, it should reach a point where it is truly impressive. Google has recently bought the company behind Like.com along with its image recognition technologies which should come in handy for the Goggles team.
In the meantime, the team is working on releasing an iPhone app which should open up the tool to a whole new market.