Mobile search just got a lot cooler with Google launching its visual search app Goggles. This hi-tech app allows mobile users to take a picture and then conduct a search on it.
Goggles supports searches of books, DVDs, popular landmarks, company logos, barcodes, products etc. The search base will grow in time as more and more data is attached to the search.
When an image is captured, the app breaks it down into signatures of objects. These signatures are then compared to the image database. Within a short time it retrieves results that closely match the signature that is present in your image. Some results are generated even without the picture using GPS and the compass functions found on the android phones.
You can walk up to a storefront, click a picture, and in seconds you could be looking at links that are associated with the business. You could get ratings, reviews or price lists as well. The same goes for books or DVDs. Though with the present beta version, there are a fair number of misses coupled with the hits the potential of the product is not hard to see.
Keyword based search is pretty much the only option most of us have when it comes to search. Using rich media like pictures to do the same operation can radically change the game. Even SEO experts will find this a new avenue, as most strategies that are currently implemented deal with language based search.
The movement from text to visual search can potentially mean that the importance of good content will rise. Since the search will be based on signatures of the object in the image, relevant content becomes easier to index in a sense. The actual implementation at Google might be complex, but this aspect is hard to miss.
Presently, Goggles is only released to Android phone users. No timeline has been given on when the product might be available to other smart phones like the iPhone and the BlackBerry. Good news however is that eventually the app will be available to the other phones as well, and Google will not be looking to restrict it to just the Android phones.
The initial limited release is intended to be more of a test version. Vic Gundotra, Google’s VP of Engineering has this to say, “Today Goggles recognizes certain images in certain categories, but our goal is to return high-quality results for any image.”
The current version of Goggles, by admission of Google, barely scratches the surface of the power of this kind of visual search. Some examples of future applications are identifying images like leaves and returning the name of the plant, or possibly get help with a chess game by taking a picture!
There is a product called “Sixth Sense” that is being developed at MIT by students. It seems like Goggles and Sixth Sense have some common traits. Both products vie to ID the world, and make it possible to index everything that exists in the physical world, and make it accessible seamlessly in the digital world. And in the distant future, maybe we will have search that could work off our brain waves.
Until this future arrives, at least for the time being, people seem to be happy to let Google show us the way forward.