Google acquires Neven Vision

Google just announced here that they acquired Neven Vision. Neven has some technology for face detection and recognition and they plan to build it into Picasa (from their post). My thoughts on this:

a) Welcome to the realization that looking inside images is important, Google.
b) The functionality they are initially targeting is similar to Riya 1.0

What does this mean for us at Riya? It means we now have tangential competition but not yet direct since with Riya 2.0 we are focusing not on personal search but on webwide similarity search.

Nonetheless, only the paranoid survive... so we continue to run fast and hard.

Comments

[/pd]

Munjal..FYI some converstions happening here

http://blog.outer-court.com/forum/62474.html

[Raj Bala]

"Only the paranoid survive." Great quote.

[Google Logs]

Munjal, did Google tried a deal with you for Riya? If they didn't, i wont like Google's stratagies for 1st time...

Please, let me know the details about the phenomena.
Also, I want to tell you that when i saw riya for the first time, I was so excited about the idea and thought that Google will aquire it one day for sure.
But, this news was a bit shocking for me.

waiting for a reply. . .
Gautam Kishore

[Fabian]

Interesting.. I had thought Neven Vision was also able to do web wide similarty search..

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=3728

F.

[Dean Niblett]

NOTE TO GOOGLE IN 2004:

Thank you for your reply. We really appreciate your thoughtful suggestion
for an image recognition search, and we'll keep it in mind for the future.

Regards,
The Google Team

Original Message Follows:
------------------------

From: "Dean Niblett"
Subject: Re: [#13850176] Blog Search? + Image Matching
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 02:18:51 +1000

..also, just a suggestion, I would like to see as a function to have an
image recognition/matching feature. For example, an image of a persons
face
or a car that the user may have on file is placed for a match...and the
closest matchable images are scanned and presented. Kind of taking images
to the same search depths that you verbally cater for?
DN
----- Original Message -----
From:
To: "Dean Niblett"
Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2004 10:37 AM
Subject: Re: [#13850176] Blog Search?

> Thank you for your note. We apologize for our delayed response. We don't
> currently offer a feature that will allow you to search only blogs. We
> appreciate your feedback about the usefulness of this feature, and we'll
> keep it in mind as we work to improve Google.
>
> Regards,
> The Google Team
>
> Original Message Follows:
> ------------------------
> From: "Dean Niblett"
> Subject: Blog Search?
> Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 03:44:09 +1000
>
> It would be handy to have a function to search only blogs; is there one,
> or one coming?
> DN
>

[Dharma]

Just curious whether riya's usage has increased tremendously due to this news?

[Google Logs]

hello munjal,
It would be nice to hear about the question i asked already in my last comment to this post ASAP. as I am waiting for a reply to create an article about this Riya-google thing on my blog Google Logs - http://googlelogs.blogspot.com

Thanks and regards,
Gautam Kishore

[Tim Tang]

Hi Munjal,

Long time reader, first time poster.

First, thanks for sharing your experience. It's great for the community as a whole.

Google acquiring Neven Vision is news, but perhaps the more interesting news here is Google not acquiring Riya. Of course, only you are in the know, but as observers and readers, the results speak and it can be puzzling.

Presuming Google didn’t approach Riya at all, I think it is sensible to ponder why not? As many know, Google makes acquisitions for a number of reasons (i.e. to acquire talents, patents, strategic operation). If Riya’s exit strategy is M&A, this may make a good topic.

For completeness, a Google acquisition is not a be-all-and-all, but as an outsider looking in, I am certainly curious from a strategic corporate development point-of-view.

Cheers.

Tim Tang
http://marketrecon.blogspot.com

[Aji Abraham]

If I were in position I wouldn't be very happy about the Google deal. but look it this way. Google will help to popularize the image recognition idea to a mass market beyond your marketing capabilities. If you have better solution than google's, you will end up with more customers than you would otherwise. So get a better solution fast folks.. chop.. chop.. We are rooting for you.

Good luck,
Aji

[Aji Abraham]

If I were in your position I wouldn't be very happy about the Google deal. But look it this way. Google will help to popularize the image recognition idea to a mass market beyond your marketing capabilities. If you have better solution than google's, you will end up with more customers than you would otherwise. So get a better solution fast folks.. chop.. chop.. We are rooting for you.

Good luck,
Aji