Google acquires visual search firm

Google has acquired an award-winning company that developed a mobile phone application that can identify a painting from a snapshot.

Plink was established by two Oxford University computer science doctoral students, Dubliner Mark Cummins and James Philbin, and develops visual search engines.

Plink won $100,000 (€66,000) in Google's second global Android Developers Challenge (ADC2) last year for PlinkArt, which was available for free on Google's Android applications site. Users could identify a piece of artwork simply by taking a photograph of it with a cameraphone.

The app scooped the top prize in the education and reference section.

Launched publically four months ago, the company has won over 50,000 users in four weeks.

Mr Cummins confirmed the sale in a post on Plink's blog, and said the team would now focus on developing visual search engine Google Goggles.

"We started Plink to bring the power of visual search to everyone, and we're delighted to be taking a big step towards that goal today. Google has already shown that it's serious about investing in this space with Google Goggles, and for the Plink team the opportunity to take our algorithms to Google-scale was just too exciting to pass up," he wrote.

"For all our users: nothing is changing. PlinkArt will continue to be available for download and work as it currently does today. However, we won't be updating the app and will instead focus our development efforts on Google Goggles."

Plink Search Ltd is registered in Ireland and the UK.