Google is known for innovation and astute acquisitions and now it seems to be on to the next big thing by acquiring the Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition company. Known in trade circles as the PittPatt, it is a company which develops technology for face recognition in pictures and video.
PittPatt is a project that came from Carnegie Melon University and deals with a number of algorithms in face detection, face tracking and face recognition. The purchase is a step back for Google which has publically declined having any interest in facial recognition software.
However the website for PittPatt said that at Google, computer vision technology is already at the core of many existing products (such as Image Search, YouTube, Picasa, and Goggles), so it’s a natural fit to join Google and bring the benefits of our research and technology to a wider audience.
Google said that it thought that the company’s research and technology can benefit our users in many ways, though whether those ways invade people’s privacy or not remains to be seen. The statement from Google added that the “Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition team has developed innovative technology in the area of pattern recognition and computer vision and they look forward to working with them”.
Chairman, Eric Schmidt of Google had said in May that they were unlikely to employ facial recognition programs, but the company has obviously had a re-think on the issue since Larry Page took over the reigns at the internet giant.