Google coy on face-recognition plans

Last week we reported that Google had acquried Neven Vision, a company that makes machine vision software, with the intention of making face recognition a part of its Picasa photo organizing software. InformationWeek is running an interesting piece by Eric Chabrow that begins like this: "Don't think Google will just use facial-recognition technology it acquired from its purchase of Neven Vision for Picasa ... That's not Google's modus operandi. If it can, Google will employ Neven Vision's technology in its online search engines to improve the way to find photographs on the Web." Of course, that makes plenty of sense. The article goes on to say that "Among the 14 facial-recognition patent applications filed by Neven Vision founder Hartmut Neven is one for an image-based search engine for mobile phones with camera," but it's not known whether that particular technology was part of the acquisition. A few months back there was a lot of speculation that Google was on the path to acquire Riya, a photo search company with a strong face-recognition offering. All of this comes with the attendant privacy questions, which will be a long time in being resolved.