Digital Home Thoughts: Google Buys Neven Vision to Boost Photo Management

"Google plans to strengthen its Picasa photo management software and service with the acquisition of Neven Vision, a Santa Monica, California, company specializing in mobile photo search. Adrian Graham, Picasa product manager, announced the deal in an official Google blog posting today, saying that Neven Vision brings expertise on automatically obtaining 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," Graham wrote."

Another great strategic move on Google's part. I don't use Picasa, but I know many people who do, and they're exactly the type of people that would use this feature the most (and then rave about it to their friends and family). I have to admit, software that could perform facial recognition would be freaking fantastic. Imagine telling Picasa "This is my mom" and then "Find all pictures with my mom" and having it work! Powerful stuff, although we've been promised content-searchers for some time now, so I'll have to see it implemented before I can recommend it. Or I'll just wait for all the Picasa users I know to rave about it to me. :wink: