Google acquired social travel app maker Jetpac to improve location-based search using photo data collected from social media sites.
Google, the world's largest internet search app, is building on its strengths of internet search by making location-based searches more appealing with photo tags. To make that happen, Google acquired the team behind Jetpac, the maker of apps that utilizes public data from social media sites like Instagram and Facebook for pictures of food, décor, places to offer insight into city's locales. The move was announced Friday on Jetpac's official website.
Google will take advantage of Jetpac's expertise in the development of local offerings and maps. The acquisition is part of an ongoing effort by the Mountain View, California-based internet giant that has landed acquisition like mapping startup Waze.
Jetpac's systems utilizes machine learning technology to let users look for things like pets, sunsets, food, flowers and more from users' own photo database. It scans through pictures for visual cues like mustaches to determine the trend and provide information about a place where the photo was taken. The technology goes beyond users' reviews, which are offered from services like Yelp or Google Maps, by giving visual information about the stuff happening at a certain place. This can be useful to find places where women go, best views or where the hipsters are, TechCrunch reported.
As a part of the deal, Jetpac will be pulling down three of its smartphone apps, a city guide, a photo analyzer and a picture detection tool. Support for existing users of the app will end September 15, the company said in its post.
Google has been on an acquisition spree of late. Earlier this month, the web giant snapped smartphone-messaging app Emu and video-creation service Directr. Google also bought smart thermostat and smoke alarm maker Nest Labs for $3.2 billion, which was the highest paid price in the history of Google. During the first half of this year, the internet search titan has spent $4.2 billion in acquisitions, Google said in its filing last month.
