Google buys companies, startups, and interesting new
technology every year and while most of its co-opted into the great Google
ecosystem, many of it is barely seen by users of the search giant’s many
services. Jetpac is a software developer for analyzing digital pictures, as it
seeks to organize the world’s information and deliver it alongside
advertisements on desktops and mobile phones.
In recent news, Google is buying Jetpac and will be removing
Jetpac’s apps from the App store in coming days and ending their support for
them on September 15. Jetpac is San Francisco based startup uses information
gleaned from social media photos such as Facebook Inc.’s Instagram Service, to
create city guides. By analyzing pictures of Food, décor, and people, Jetpac’s
offers insight into city locals. Jetpac launched in 2012 as a social travel
guide on iPad but later shifted focus to its Instagram driven data on its
iPhone app, “Jetpac City Guides.”
Google has been highly acquisitive. Earlier this month, it
said it was acquiring smartphone-messaging application Emu and video creation service Directr
Inc., bolstering its mobile and advertising capabilities. The company more
than tripled spending on deals in the first half of the year to $4.2 Billion.
Pete Warden and Julian Green founded Jetpac, with Green now CEO and warden CTO.
It has raised $2.4 million from venture capitalists firms, including Khosla
ventures.
As more people upload photos and video to the web, demand has
increased for services that can parse through images without written cues.
Facebook earlier this year invested in artificial intelligence lab partially to
improve its understanding of image and video content. Jetpac’s three
application of smartphone, including a city guide, a photo analyzer, and
picture detection tool will no longer be offered as downloads and support for
them will end on September 15. Google has been building up its local offerings
and maps offerings. Last year, Google bought mapping startup Waze Inc, paying
about $1.1 Billion.
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