Google confirms Goggles for iPhone

Goggles - coming to the iPhone soon
Goggles - coming to the iPhone soon

Google has confirmed that its impressive visual search tool Google Goggles will be available on iPhone and other platforms soon, after its trial spell on the Android handset.

Released as a Labs product, only Android handset owners can try out the visual search, but speaking to TechRadar Google's Hugo Barra confirmed that other handsets would 'absolutely' be coming to other platforms.

"It will be coming to other platforms," said Barra. "Android is currently the platform our developers are a little bit more comfortable with."

World's information

"We'd like to feel it is a little more ready for the mainstream when we bring it to other platforms," he added

"Our mission is to make all the world's information available to everyone - and that means whatever device they are using."

18 months of work

Barra explained that the engineers have been working on the Goggles project for about 18 months – and that work will continue.

"When we believed that its gotten to the point that it works really well for a significant amount of queries we will add it to the Google Mobile App," said Barra.

"There is already a microphone button [in the Mobile App] so it will also have a camera button when we feel that picture search is as robust as voice search was.

"Our plan is for visual search to be robust enough to be part of our core search experience on mobile devices."

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Patrick Goss

Patrick Goss is the ex-Editor in Chief of TechRadar. Patrick was a passionate and experienced journalist, and he has been lucky enough to work on some of the finest online properties on the planet, building audiences everywhere and establishing himself at the forefront of digital content.  After a long stint as the boss at TechRadar, Patrick has now moved on to a role with Apple, where he is the Managing Editor for the App Store in the UK.