Google pretty much wins when it comes to translation software, but there’s been one company making a name for themselves when it comes to visual translations – Word Lens, but Google Translate is about to improve that aspect of their game, with Quest Visual – makers of the Word Lens app – today announcing that they’ve been acquired by Google.
The Blog post on the Word Lens site outlines that they will be joining the Google team to help mobile devices specifically, to better translate the visual world. As a bonus though, both the App and all the language packs
By joining Google, we can incorporate Quest Visual’s technology into Google Translate’s broad language coverage and translation capabilities in the future.
As a thank you to everybody who supported us on our journey, we’ve made both the app and the language packs free to download for a limited time while we transition to Google.
We’re looking forward to continuing our work at Google – stay tuned!
The Word Lens app itself is quite good, with both Android and iOS versions, as well as a more recent Glassware addition. The Android and iOS apps will most likely receive no further updates as the core services and technology become integrated into the Google Translate app. What will happen to the Glassware app though is an interesting quandry, but perhaps a future XE?? update will incorporate the function into Glass as a native option.
For now though, jump over to Google Play and grab the App and check it and all the language features out for free, or check out the video :
It’s sad to see another GREAT start-up sell out to the one of the Global Giants.
I can think of why Google would want to swallow Word Lens, and it has nothing to do with what is suggested by this article’s headline. Word Lens is a competing technology to Google Translate. Swallow the competitor, then after a while make the former competitor become yet another Closed By Google.