Prompt's Blog

Google has been hard at work developing new ways to search for information in the mobile realm. The latest development in the evolution of search is Google Goggles, a search application for mobile phones that interfaces with Google Android cameras in order to visually search the web.

When a user takes a photo of an object, Goggles processes it and looks through Google’s databases for a match. It will also look at information such as a user’s location to find the most relevant results, from images to text and businesses. Currently, it can identify tourist landmarks and images, although it processes images in black and white. It has facial recognition, but that feature hasn’t fully been fleshed out yet, especially because of the privacy ramifications of implementing it.

Google Goggles at the moment is described as “rudimentary.” However, in the near future, it seems likely that smartphone cameras will make the search for information faster than ever. Imagine you’re traveling around a city and see an interesting site, and you wonder what it is. With the click of a button Google will search for you and tell you its history, interesting things about it, and show any communities relating to it. Or if you see an interesting ad for a movie, you can point your camera at it and see the trailer.

When fully fleshed out, a concept like Google Goggles could alter our view of the world. Our mobile phones go with us everywhere, and the cameras on our phones could be used to both send and receive information online. With proper use of crowdsourcing, tremendous amounts of knowledge and views of the world could potentially be uncovered.

Labels: google, Google Goggles, mobile