Yahoo has acquired an image-recognition startup called IQ Engines to improve photo organization and search functionality on its popular online photo sharing service, Flickr.
Yahoo is on its toes to grab the crown from Google to be the largest internet search engine. The company has acquired yet another start-up, which will be used to improve its online photo sharing service, Flickr.
IQ Engines, an image-recognition startup, was acquired by Yahoo that will be working with the Flickr team from now. The latest acquisition is to improve "photo organization and search for the community," IQ Engines said in a post on its Homepage.
Yahoo intends using the two main APIs that the startup offers in its service, the SmartCamera and SmartAlbum. The functionality of these two APIs is unique as the SmartCamera uses the device's camera to scan products and brand logos to interact with them and the SmartAlbum integrates facial recognition and photo analysis into online collections of photographs. It finds all people in the album and lets users organize photos accordingly. Different options help in finding photos more easily, like bike detector finds photos with bikes and car detector find photos with cars. Similarly, portraits find close-ups of a single person and group shots finds group photos.
IQ Engines has stopped registering new users but offers support for existing customers who can sign in to use the APIs within 30 days from now.
"We are thrilled to announce that IQ Engines is joining the Flickr team at Yahoo!. As longtime Flickr fans and fellow photography enthusiasts, we look forward to working on improving photo organization and search for the community," IE Engines Team said in its post, first cited by TechCrunch.
"At IQ Engines, our dream has been to transform the way people search and browse their photos by helping to process them intelligently. We are excited to take things to a global level with one of the most widely used photo services in the world."
Yahoo did not release the financial details of the deal, nor did IQ Engines, but the latest acquisition shows Yahoo's commitment to make its services better.
