Google acquires visual search engine Plink

According to a published blog post by the two-year old visual search engine company Plink, Google has acquired the company with financial details and terms of the deal being kept secret.

Plink is a visual search engine on Android that is able to analyze content visually and display search results. For example, a user could take a picture of a painting with their Android phone, and Plink would then analyze the photograph with its proprietary algorithm to give you additional information and search results. Philbin explained to The Guardian how the technology works, “It picks out repeatable elements from the image you take and comes out with a statistical representation of them.” The company says the Android app was downloaded more than 50,000 unique times.

 The Plink founders, James Philbin and mark Cummins, who both are Oxford PhD students, will now work on Google’s equivalent visual search engine projected called Google Goggles. The founders said today Plink would remain available for now.

Plink last year received $100,000 at the Google Android Developer contest where the top Android apps were eligible to win prized money towered their development.

The acquisition marks the first UK acquisition for Google.