Google Buys Flutter, Gesture Recognition App

Google acquired Flutter, a startup that built a software that lets you control music and movies with gestures. The desktop software uses your computer's webcam to detect your gestures. "Just put your hand up to stop the media playback, point your thumb right for 'next' and left for 'previous'," reports ArsTechnica.

You can still download the apps for Windows and Mac OS X. The software supports media players like iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, Spotify, VLC, but also sites like YouTube, Netflix and Pandora using a Chrome extension.

Gestures are intuitive, but detection didn't work that well for me.

Flutter's comic-style site asks users to join "the fight against unnatural user interfaces".

"When we started three years ago, our dream to build a ubiquitous and power-efficient gesture recognition technology was considered by many as just 'a dream', not a real possibility. Since then, we have strived to build the best machine vision algorithms and a delightful user experience. Today, we are thrilled to announce that we will be continuing our research at Google. We share Google's passion for 10x thinking, and we're excited to add their rocket fuel to our journey," wrote Navneet Dalal, Flutter's CEO.

From touch interfaces, voice-driven user interfaces to gesture recognition, object recognition, facial recognition and biometric scanning, it looks like computers will change dramatically and natural user interfaces will make computers disappear into the background. Xbox Kinect, Google Glass, smartwatches and other wearable computers, flexible screens are probably just the beginning.

{ via ArsTechnica }

Google Acquires BlindType to Improve Android's Virtual Keyboard

Google bought BlindType, a service that allows you to type faster and more accurately on a virtual keyboard. "With BlindType, users can type on the touch screen the way they are used to, but without the traditional need to constantly focus on the keyboard. Although this would typically lead to countless spelling mistakes that would be impossible to autocorrect, BlindType predicts what the user intended to write with a success rate not previously seen on any other system."

Singularity Hub found that BlindType's application "knows what you meant to type, even if you make mistakes. Lots of them. In fact, you can type without looking at the screen at all."

Unfortunately, the application is not available in the Android Market or the iTunes App Store, but it will certainly be used to improve Android's virtual keyboard.



{ via Mashable }

Quiksee Acquired by Google

The Israeli startup Quiksee confirmed that it has been acquired by Google and its employees will join the Google Geo team. "Quiksee is an Internet start-up company that focuses on creating location based interactive videos. Our vision is to fill the world maps with Quiksee tours that will let people virtually travel across the planet as if they were there," explains Quicksee's site.

Haaretz says that "the firm's technology is regarded as the missing link in Google's Street View service (used by both Google Maps and Google Earth), which allows users to view photos along numerous streets around the world". Quiksee's software allowed you to create interactive panoramic tours from your videos, without having to use a Street View camera. TechCrunch speculates that Google could "accept geo-tagged, 3D panoramas uploaded by consumers" to improve Google Maps.



Here's a video that shows how Quiksee could integrate with Google Street View:



Google might even use Quiksee to add interactive Street View videos to Google Maps, like the ones demoed by Microsoft's Blaise Agüera y Arcas at a TED conference.

Google Buys SocialDeck

Google acquired yet another social gaming company: SocialDeck. The start-up had an interesting idea: creating a platform for playing games on any device. "SocialDeck was founded in 2008 with the vision of enabling 'anywhere, anytime, anyone' gaming. The company has launched several titles for the iPhone, Facebook, and BlackBerry using its social gaming platform technology, which enables simultaneous game play across multiple mobile devices and social networks," explains SocialDeck's site.

It should be obvious that Google doesn't buy companies like SocialDeck to develop games. Most likely, Google wants to create a platform for social gaming that will enable users to play the same game on an Android device, on an iPhone, on a computer, on a Chrome OS tablet, in Google Me or any other social network that uses Google's platform.

Here's an overview of SocialDeck's gaming platform:



{ via Inside Social Games }

Google Buys Like.com (and Riya, Too)

Google acquired Like.com, a product search engine that used visual search to find similar products. "We were the first to bring visual search to shopping, the first to build an automated cross-matching system for clothing, and more," says Munjal Shah, the former CEO of Riya, the company that developed Like.com.

Riya launched in 2005 an impressive software that used face recognition to organize photos. "Riya leveraged facial and text recognition technology with an intelligent interface to help people make sense of the thousands of untitled and untagged photos that are building up on their hard drives." Google launched a similar service 4 years later, using technology from Neven Vision.


Much like Google Wave, Riya's software looked great in demos, but it didn't work well in the real world. The software required a huge collection of photos and each photo had to be uploaded to Riya's servers. "The process is slow; Riya says it takes about 24 hours to upload 4,000 pictures," mentioned the USA Today at that time.

Apparently, Google intended to buy Riya in 2005, but decided to acquire Neven Vision, a company that had a lot of patents on face recognition, photo analysis, visual mobile search. Neven Vision's acquisition helped Google add face recognition to Picasa, advanced features to Google Image Search and visual search to Android.

Why would Google acquire Riya? Probably because the company has many patents on visual recognition and a lot of talented engineers that could work on bigger projects than Like.com. In 2006, Riya planned to launch a visual search engine with support for object recognition, but the company didn't find a way to monetize the product, so it focused on product search, which was more lucrative. Now the team can finally build Riya 2.0:


{ via TechCrunch }

Google Buys Slide

Google announced that it has acquired Slide, a start-up that develops social apps. TechCrunch reports that Google paid $228 million for Slide, after investing in Zynga, one of Slide's competitors.

"For Google, the web is about people, and we're working to develop open, transparent and interesting (and fun!) ways to allow our users to take full advantage of how technology can bring them closer to friends and family and provide useful information just for them. Slide has already created compelling social experiences for tens of millions of people across many platforms, and we've already built strong social elements into products like Gmail, Docs, Blogger, Picasa and YouTube. As the Slide team joins Google, we'll be investing even more to make Google services socially aware and expand these capabilities for our users across the web."

It's obvious that Google plans to launch a social service to compete with Facebook, but it's not clear why it would buy a company that develops apps like SuperPoke, SuperPoke Pets or FunSpace. Maybe for Slide's engineering talent, Slide's valuable analytics data or maybe because it couldn't buy Zynga.


Social networks and online games account for about 33% of the time spent online in the US, according to a Nielsen study. Tom Chatfield, the author of Fun Inc: Why Games Are The 21st Century's Most Serious Business, thinks that social games aren't a fad: "People realised that a social platform like Facebook gives people ways to show off to, or compete with, their friends. It's so much more engaging to do something with people you know than to do it with strangers. You can cheat if you're playing online with strangers, but playing with friends is an incentive to be fair, and that brings the emotional rewards of competition."

Since Facebook has the Internet's main social graph and stores data about more than 500 million users, all the cool social apps integrate with Facebook. In the future, every web application will have a social component, which will probably powered by Facebook, a closed social network that traps user data.

OpenSocial is a Google project whose goal was to create social apps that work in any social network. FriendConnect was designed to transform any site in an OpenSocial container. Buzz is the epitome of openness, by embracing open standards and allowing anyone to access the firehose, which includes public activity from every Buzz user. Unfortunately, these projects haven't been very successful, so Google will have to build a social network on top of OpenSocial, Google Buzz and Google Profiles. The project is crucial for the future of Google search, Google ads, Google's web apps and maybe more than that.

Peter Norvig says in an interview that Google's biggest mistake was ignoring social networking.

"I can't speak for the whole company, but I guess not embracing the social aspects [was Google's biggest mistakes]. Facebook came along and has been very successful, and I may have dismissed that early on. There was this initial feeling of, 'Well, this is about real, valid information, and Facebook is more about celebrity gossip or something.' I think I missed the fact that there is real importance to having a social network and getting these recommendations from friends. I might have been too focused on getting the facts and figures—to answer a query such as 'What digital camera should I buy?' with the best reviews and facts, when some people might prefer to know 'Oh, my friend Sally got that one; I'll just get the same thing.' Maybe something isn't the right answer just because your friends like it, but there is something useful there, and that's a factor we have to weigh in along with the others."

Google Buys ITA Software to Add Flight Search

Google announced the acquisition of ITA Software, a flight information software company from Massachusetts that develops software for airlines, travel agencies and technology companies. One of the many ITA customers is Microsoft, which used its technology to power Bing Travel:

"Bing, Microsoft's new decision search engine, combines innovative fare prediction technology (previously known as Farecast) with the industry's leading airfare pricing and shopping system by ITA Software to assist travelers to make faster and more informed choices."

The list of sites that use ITA's technology is impressive: Kayak, Orbitz, CheapTickets, Hotwire, FareCompare and more. Google intends to pay $700 million to acquire a long-established company that provides technology for some of the most popular flight search services.

Marissa Mayer says that Google will develop its own flight search service. "Once we've completed our acquisition of ITA, we'll work on creating new flight search tools that will make it easier for you to search for flights, compare flight options and prices and get you quickly to a site where you can buy your ticket."

Right now, Google shows an OneBox that links to popular services like Expedia, Orbitz and Kayak:


In the future, Google will probably use the OneBox to promote its own service. ITA software offers an online demo of its technology, which includes cool features like interactive calendar for finding the lowest fares, real-time filters and color-coded bars that let you compare flights:

Google Buys BumpTop, 3D Desktop

Google bought BumpTop, an interesting software that replaces your computer's desktop with an intuitive 3D environment where you can quickly organize your files.

BumpTop is a fresh, innovative 3D desktop user interface that lets you stay organized and share your files and photos from your desktop naturally and easily. BumpTop has the look and feel of a real desktop, so it's natural and intuitive. But unlike a real desk where stacks can become unruly, BumpTop lets you pile files intelligently -- by project, by file type or any way you choose.

People organize their real-world desks in any number of different ways, to suit their own style. Research shows that everyone stacks and piles their documents, and almost a third of people indicate stacking and piling is their preferred way of organizing their desks. However, people have had to conform to the rigid, conventional desktop organization which is grid and folder based. BumpTop allows users to create a digital desktop that is intuitive and easy to use, just like their physical one but with the power and intelligence of the underlying computer to increase productivity in a fun and playful way.

You can still download BumpTop for Windows and Mac until the end of the week. The application doesn't use a lot of resources and it completely replaces your desktop. Even if it doesn't support multi-touch or Linux, BumpTop seems like the perfect addition to Android.


{ via CNet }

Google Buys LabPixies

Google acquired LabPixies, an Israeli startup that developed high-quality iGoogle gadgets and ported them to other platforms: iPhone, Android, Facebook, OpenSocial. LabPixies created widgets for games, calendars, feed readers, notes and even for ads.

"One of the first developers to create gadgets for iGoogle was Labpixies. Over the years, we worked closely together on a variety of projects, including the launch of a number of global OpenSocial based gadgets. Recently, we decided that we could do more if we were part of the same team, and as such, we're thrilled to announce the acquisition of Labpixies. We are looking forward to working with Labpixies to develop great web apps and leverage their knowledge and expertise to help developers and improve the ecosystem overall," mentions Google Code Blog.

iGoogle really needs some new ideas to remain relevant. The updated interface launched in 2008 and the social gadgets launched last year weren't very popular. For example, the NY Times Crossword gadget developed by LabPixies only has 92,000 users, although it was a featured social gadget.

Google Acquires DocVerse

Another week day, another Google acquisition. This time, Google bought DocVerse, a company founded by two former Microsoft employees which built a plug-in for Microsoft Office that lets you collaborate with other people in real-time.

"DocVerse combines the benefits of web-based collaboration tools like Google Docs and Zoho with the power and familiarity of the world's most popular productivity application, Microsoft Office. DocVerse offers the first ever product to truly enable real-time sharing and editing of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files. Its key advantage is that it does not require you to learn a new way to work by seamlessly plugging into Microsoft Office."

DocVerse doesn't use Google Docs as a back-end for real-time collaboration, but Google will probably integrate with Google Docs.


Google says that many people "are still accustomed to desktop software", so the acquisition will help these users to try cloud computing services while still using their favorite software.

DocVerse's blog offers an interesting perspective of a two former Microsoft employees: "We fundamentally believe that Google is one of the best positioned companies to truly disrupt the world of productivity software. We're looking forward to the opportunity to scale our vision at Google. Our first step will be to combine DocVerse with Google Apps to create a bridge between Microsoft Office and Google Apps."

Google says that you can no longer create a new DocVerse account, but there's a simple way to try the Microsoft Office plug-in. Download the setup and create a new account when DocVerse asks you to log in.

Google Buys Picnik

It's difficult to understand why Google didn't develop an online photo editor: it would've integrated with Picasa Web Albums, Google Docs and other Google services. Right now, Picasa Web Albums is just an online extension of Picasa, a popular software that lets you manage your photos. Unlike Picasa Web Albums, most Google services work online and don't require additional applications.

Instead of migrating Picasa online, Google acquired Picnik, an online photo editor that already integrates with Picasa Web Albums and many other photo services.

"Today, we're excited to announce that Google has acquired Picnik, one of the first sites to bring photo editing to the cloud. Using Picnik, you can crop, do touch-ups and add cool effects to your photos, all without leaving your web browser," mentions Google's blog.


Picnik will not be discontinued and Google promises that the service will continue to support all the existing partners, but I suspect that Flickr will no longer use it as the default photo editor.

"When Bitnik, Inc was created, our founders envisioned making great software for real people and giving users the power to edit digital photos in their browser, without having to purchase or download complicated software. While our first office in 2005 only had two desks, today we've grown to 20 employees and have become the world's most fun online photo editor, with millions of visitors every month," says Virginia from Picnik.

Google will have to rethink its strategy and no longer build online extensions for software, even if they own a popular application like Picasa. Google Photos should be a standalone service that doesn't require Picasa to upload more than 5 photos, to download photo albums or to quickly retouch a photo.

Google Acquires AppJet

Google buys yet another company: AppJet, the start-up that created EtherPad, an innovative online word processor. The EtherPad team, that includes three former Googlers, will join the Google Wave team. EtherPad will be available for the existing users until March 31, 2010.

"Other real-time editors like Google Docs work by broadcasting an updated copy of the document to everyone every 15 seconds. This creates a noticeable lag that gets in the way of collaboration. You start editing something, only to find 10 seconds later that someone else deleted it. Etherpad updates every copy of the document every half second. This 30x increase in speed changes the experience completely. Your edits hardly ever clash with other users'. So you work confidently instead of tentatively."  (from EtherPad's site)



{ via Paul Buchheit }

Google Acquires Gizmo5

Google confirms the acquisition of Gizmo5, a proprietary SIP soft phone. "The Gizmo5 network uses open standards for call management, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). However, the Gizmo5 client application is proprietary software and uses several proprietary codecs, including GIPS, iSAC, the wideband adaptive codec made popular by Skype," explains Wikipedia. Gizmo5 is "the only SIP service without PSTN-based US phone numbers that may be used with Google Voice."

"While we don't have any specific features to announce right now, Gizmo5's engineers will be joining the Google Voice team to continue improving the Google Voice and Gizmo5 experience. Current Gizmo5 users will still be able to use the service, though we will be suspending new signups for the time being, and existing users will no longer be able to sign up for a call-in number," mentions Google.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Gizmo5 morphing into a new version of Google Talk, with built-in support for Google Voice.

Google Buys AdMob

Google acquired AdMob, a mobile ad company well-known for its innovative solutions to monetize iPhone apps and iPhone-optimized web sites. "AdMob is the world's largest mobile advertising marketplace, offering solutions for discovery, branding and monetization on the mobile web."

"Publishers and developers are increasingly searching for ways to make more money from their content in the rapidly evolving online mobile space. Google is working hard to provide those means of monetization so that mobile content can grow as quickly as we'd all like it to. AdMob accelerates this process for us with their talent and technology," explains Google. "Google currently makes a very small amount from mobile ads relative to our overall revenue, but the prospects for this space are excellent."

In the past year, Google has launched many feature that improved mobile ads: a new search ad format for iPhone and Android phones, ads for mobile apps, better AdSense ads for smartphones.

"Despite the tremendous growth in mobile usage and the substantial investment by many businesses in the space, the mobile web is still in its early stages. We believe that great mobile advertising products can encourage even more growth in the mobile ecosystem. That's what has us excited about this deal," mentions a Google blog post.

Google paid $750 million for AdMob, the third biggest Google acquisition after DoubleClick ($3.1 billion) and YouTube ($1.65 billion).

Google Buys reCAPTCHA

reCAPTCHA seems like a perfect match for Google: it's a project that generates CAPTCHAs and uses the results to digitize books. "reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. (...) Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one."


It's no wonder that Google decided to acquire reCAPTCHA and use the service to improve Google Book Search's digitizing accuracy.

"reCAPTCHA's unique technology improves the process that converts scanned images into plain text, known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This technology also powers large scale text scanning projects like Google Books and Google News Archive Search. Having the text version of documents is important because plain text can be searched, easily rendered on mobile devices and displayed to visually impaired users. So we'll be applying the technology within Google not only to increase fraud and spam protection for Google products but also to improve our books and newspaper scanning process."

The service offers a simple JavaScript API that allows you to embed CAPTCHAs in any web page and many popular sites use it: Facebook, Twitter, Ticketmaster.

Google Acquires SketchUp, 3D Sketching Software

Google acquired @Last Software, the creator of SketchUp, a powerful tool for creating, viewing, and modifying 3D models quickly and easily. SketchUp was developed to combine the elegance and spontaneity of pencil sketching with the speed and flexibility of today's digital media.

Although Sketchup is a commercial software (it costs $495), you can try it for 8 hours (31.2 MB, available for Windows and MacOS X).

One reason for which Google acquired this company is that SketchUp has a very nice plug-in for Google Earth. You can create virtual models for buildings, parks or streets.

Google Acquires Writely

Google Blog announces a new acquisition: Writely - the web word processor.

"For the last five months, I've been part of a Silicon Valley startup called Upstartle, which makes Writely, a collaborative word processor that runs in a web browser. Well, as of Monday, I'm happy to say that I, and the rest of the Writely team, are now part of Google." says Jen Mazzon, from the new Google Writely team.

But what is Writely? A Web 2.0 Ajax application that lets you edit and share documents, collaborate and organize documents by tags. Writely also backups data every 10 seconds, lets you create web pages from your documents and control who can see your pages.

Google Writely will probably be integrated in the new GDrive project that gives users (almost) infinite storage and web applications that create a seamless transition to what will eventually be Google Operating System.

Google to Broadcast Radio Ads

Google is acquiring Newport Beach-based dMarc Broadcasting, which runs an automated advertising platform for radio. It seems like Google will start delivering radio ads with an automated system.

dMarc connects advertisers directly to radio stations through its automated advertising platform. The platform simplifies the sales process, scheduling, delivery and reporting of radio advertising, enabling advertisers to more efficiently purchase and track their campaigns. For broadcasters, dMarc’s technology automatically schedules and places advertising, helping to increase revenue and decrease the costs associated with processing advertisements.

In the future, Google plans to integrate dMarc technology into the Google AdWords platform, creating a new radio ad distribution channel for Google advertisers.

How much did Google pay? Only $102 million.

Top 5 Google acquisitions

5.

Urchin Software (March 2005), Web Analytics software.

Urchin is a web site analytics solution used by web site owners and marketers to better understand their users’ experiences, optimize content and track marketing performance.


4.

Pyra Labs (February 2003), editor of Blogger, blogging platform.


3.

Keyhole (October 2004), imagery by satellite.

Keyhole’s technology combines a multi-terabyte database of mapping information and images collected from satellites and airplanes with easy-to-use software.


2.

Kaltix (September 2003). Research on personalized search, from Taher Haveliwala, Glen Jeh, and Sepandar Kamvar.

Kaltix Corp. was formed in June 2003 and focuses on developing personalized and context-sensitive search technologies that make it faster and easier for people to find information on the web.


1.

Applied Semantics (April 2003), contextual advertising.

Applied Semantics’ products are based on its patented CIRCA technology, which understands, organizes, and extracts knowledge from websites and information repositories in a way that mimics human thought and enables more effective information retrieval.