Google has bought a specialist face scanning technology company called Pitt Patt, which could well soon change the way we use the web in a fundamental way.
Pittsburgh-based Pitt Patt was founded in 2004 by a bunch of scientists from Carnegie Mellon University.
Pitt Patt's tech can identify users from their faces and track the movement of people and objects in front of the webcam.
Pattern Recognition tech
"We are happy to announce that Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition has been acquired by Google!" reads a notice on the company's website this week.
"Joining Google is the next thrilling step in a journey that began with research at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute in the 1990s and continued with the launching of Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition (PittPatt) in 2004. We've worked hard to advance the research and technology in many important ways and have seen our technology come to life in some very interesting products.
"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.
"We will continue to tap the potential of computer vision in applications that range from simple photo organization to complex video and mobile applications."
It will be interesting to see what Google uses Pitt Patt's face recognition technology for in the future.
To get an idea of the possibilities of how this tech might be integrated into something such as Google Goggles or the new Google+ social network, you can see Pitt Patt's FaceSort demo video right here.
Via Fastcompany
