Thursday, November 17, 2005

Google gobbling up Riya?

Om Malik posts a rumor that Riya may be getting acquired by Google.

Riya does automatic people and object recognition in photos. The technology supposedly can automatically tag photos with descriptions of the content of the image. It has obvious applicability to Google Image Search and Picasa.

Interesting if it turns out to be true. Yahoo's focus seems to be on community and user-generated content (like Flickr tagging). Google focuses on automation using clever algorithms. Google acquiring Riya would fit that pattern.

[via Niall Kennedy]

Update: Michael Arrington has a fun sneak peek at Riya's technology.

Update: The rumor was bogus.

Update: A year later, Riya gives up on face recognition as too hard and switches to recognizing characteristics of products. Very lame given all the Riya hype. Riya appears to have been yet another company with vaporware. They made strong claims about solving hard problems that they never could actually solve.

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