“Google is working on Google Visual Search, a mobile application that lets users take a picture of a location from their Android-powered smartphone and trigger a Google search that pulls up information associated with the image. The search engine revealed its plans on CNBC’s “Inside the Mind of Google,” segment Dec. 3. Pairing digital ads, possibly from Google’s AdMob acquisition, is a natural way to make money from visual mobile searches. Many people take pictures from their increasingly improving smartphone cameras daily, but imagine if those users could leverage the images as search tools instead of simply fun pictures to look at.”

A couple of provided examples:

“Imagine you are on travel in Paris and you visit a museum. If a picture catches your attention you can simply take a photo and send it to the VMS service. Within seconds you will receive an audio-visual narrative explaining the image to you. If you happen to be connected to a 3G network the response time would be below a second.”

“Visual advertising content may be displayed on a digital billboard or large television screen. A user may take of picture of the billboard and the displayed advertisement to get additional information about the advertised product, enter a contest, etc. The effectiveness of the advertisement can be measured in real time by counting the number of “clicks” the advertisement generates from camera phone users. The content of the advertisement may be adjusted to increase its effectiveness based on the click rate.

The billboard may provide time sensitive advertisements that are target to passing camera phone users such as factory workers arriving leaving work, parents picking up kids from school, or the like. The real-time click rate of the targeted billboard advertisements may confirm or refute assumptions used to generate the targeted advertisement.”

I like where this is going. Giggity.

Check out eWeek’s article if you’d like more info, there’s certainly more to be had!

…and now for a word from our sponsor (not really):

“In the next CNBC Original, Maria Bartiromo takes viewers Inside The Mind of Google for a rare look at the world’s most powerful technology company and its crown jewel, the Google Internet search engine. This is the fascinating story of how two grad students, in barely a decade, took a one-time research project and turned it into a global technology powerhouse…changing the way we interact with information, the Internet, and each other. See how Google came to dominate the search industry and turn it into a profit machine… and see where it’s taking its next step… and how the company plans to address arguably the biggest controversy in today’s digital age: privacy.”

Update: Seems it’s actually called “Google Goggles”. Here’s a video that has made it’s way to the youtubes:

[ eWeek |  AndroidandMe |  Inside The Mind Of Google ]