Google Acquires Image-Recognition Expert Jetpac for Undisclosed Sum

Jetpac is about to board its final flight, having been recently acquired by Google for an unknown sum. As part of the acquisition, the company is scuttling its iOS app—it's unknown at this time whether Google plans to integrate Jetpac's technology into its own services, or whether the acquisition was an "acqui-hire," to put it in Silicon Valley parlance.

As for what Jetpac does—soon, did—the company's iOS app is fairly simple, but rather novel in its application. It scans through Instagram photos to match up types of people with locations they're frequenting. This allows one to pull up the app and see what places are most frequented in a city by various personalities: pet lovers, foodies, business travelers, students, et cetera.

Jetpac, in essence, uses its analyses of Instagram photos to create city guides (more than 6,000 in all, by the time the app goes away on September 15). The guides themselves are full of "top 10" lists of things to do in particular locations, mostly focused on the most popular places to go (including how happy people look in the public Instagram pictures they take in these locations).

"You can now search for places to go to in the way that you naturally visualize it, rather than reading through an amenities list or parsing text reviews. People use it to quickly get a sense of a place and the people who go there – photos don't lie," explained Jetpac CEO Julian Green in a 2013 interview with TechCrunch.

And, of course, if you get bored scanning through cities for things to do, you can also put your visual acumen to the test by going through one of the app's photo quizzes to see if you can recognize a particular city via Instagram pictures.

While we somehow doubt Google will be building out little quizzes for its users using Jetpac's technology, it's certainly possible that the company's laser-like focus on facial recognition could prove handy for Google's social elements—yes, even Google+. Jetpac's tech could also be used to bolster Google's own local search and retail reviewing efforts.

Jetpac started up in 2011 and secured a $2.4 million funding round in 2012, which included investors like Khosla Ventures, Morado Venture partners, and former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang.