What happens when start-ups get swallowed up by the Google machine?
Sometimes they can have a big effect – like the Keyhole acquisition that powered Google Maps, other times they can just disappear - like the mobile social networking site Dodgeball.
Their gestation into new services can take a long time – we are still awaiting what will happen to the Twitter-like Jaiku, bought nearly a year ago.
However, Neven Vision, a start-up bought for its photo recognition software two years ago, has finally reappeared in the shape of a new function in Google’s online photo-sharing site.
An upgrade to the Picasa Web Albums site has added a ‘name tags’ feature. Users can now sort their photos according to who is in the picture.
The technology scans all photos uploaded to find faces and then prompts the user to enter a name for similar faces that it finds, removing any incorrect ones.
People can then be found in searches and albums, and slideshows can be created of particular people and groups.
Another start-up, Riya, offers similar functionality and was rumoured to be a Google target before it settled on Neven.
The feature should give users more control over their photos by making tagging and sorting much easier, but it may not be enough to persuade others to switch their online photo storage from services such as Yahoo’s Flickr.
However, installing Picasa 3.0 – the latest version of its free photo editing and organising software – could provide an added incentive. One new feature is web sync, which makes automatic changes to the online copies of photos that match any improvements made on the desktop program to the locally stored originals.
