Google Goggles is a powerful image-driven search application, which is currently available only on Android phones (strange and disappointing given how pervasive the iPhone is, but we're going to assume that it will eventually be available on Apple devices as well in the near future!) The app allows users to take a photograph of anything and submit it to Google - just as you would a typewritten phrase or voice memo - to get a list of search results. The concept is certainly not new, but the feature's strength lies in the variety of functions that can be performed by using simply one app - shopping, mapping, scanning and, of course, Google search.The power of visual search has thus far mostly been limited to shopping apps. Most notable for me has been the Amazon.com app, which allows you to submit a photo of a product, visually search through the site, and decide on the spot if buying a product/book in-store is cheaper than buying it online on Amazon.com. I have used this feature so many times (and found the better deal on Amazon) that it has almost become a shopping ritual for when I'm buying certain products such as books and appliances.
But with Goggles, visual search extends beyond the ability to buy and becomes another easy aid to simply gather information, at the click of a button. The ramifications for a Wikipedia fiend like myself are huge. Plus the integrations with Google's mapping functions will have an immense impact on Augmented Reality applications - point your camera at a scene and poweful algorithms coordinate with a GPS and compass to make names of stores pop up, along with information about them? I can see a number of crazy games and marketing ploys coming out of this feature.
I also find the business card scanner/OCR function of Goggles rather exciting; thus far, if you wanted to take a photo of a business card and download the information into your phone's contacts, you had to either pay $3.99 and upwards for an iPhone app, and in some cases, wait 24 hours for the data to return the result. But Goggles offers this functionality for free and downloads the data instantly.
I'm looking forward to having this functionality available on the iPhone. It'll be an significant improvement in the way we search for information, and will offer a definite leg up over the current voice search capability, which is great in theory but has very spotty performance... at least for with those of us who have dubious American accents!
