So far Google Goggles has been little more than a novelty app with software that hasn’t quite caught up to its full potential. With the announcement that Google purchased visual search startup Plink, we got the impression that they were looking to expand the Goggles brand. Now comes word that Google plans to turn the app into a full-blown API set that will allow developers to create better augmented reality and visual search based applications for mobile devices.
In a conversation with TechRadar, Google product manager Shailesh Nalawadi revealed that while the plans for an open Goggles API are indeed moving forward, they are still searching for ideas from developers for the best way to implement it. He does however assure that “Goggles is not just an app – it’s a platform.” Check out Shailesh in the below video.
There are still a few wrinkles to iron out in effectively creating useful augmented reality apps based on visual search, such as increasing the accuracy of a devices location awareness, but this is a great step towards getting the full potential out of the Goggles concept.
When Goggles was first released for Android I was quite taken with it, however there are some glaring flaws that make it of little use on an every day basis. With improvements in both the search database and search accuracy/technology visual search could very well see a big boom. It’s conducive to the mobile environment where spontaneous searches are easier to conduct via snapping an image rather than finding the right words to create a standard search query.
[via IntoMobile]