Google buys photo-analyzing start up, Jetpac

Google buys photo-analyzing start up, Jetpac

Jetpac analyzes Instagram photos to create city travel guides.

Photo-analysis startup, Jetpac, is the latest addition to Google’s growing family. The company announced on its website that it was joining the Mountain View company. The dollar figure of the deal remains undisclosed for now, and Google has yet to comment.

In its current incarnation, Jetpac is an app that analyzes Instagram photos to create city travel guides. Its algorithms scan for commonalities among photos to generate top-10 lists on topics such as “bars women like,” or “coffee shops popular with hipsters.”

“In the hipster category, we looked at how many more mustaches were in pictures versus the general rate of mustache wearing, and how big they are versus the normal rate of mustache exhibition,” Jetpac founder and CEO Julian Green told the New York Times.

While certainly a novel concept, the utility of these city guides is somewhat questionable.

“If we’re being totally honest, those guides weren’t all that illuminating — tapping into one wouldn’t give you much more than a stream of Instagram photos and location/contact information for each hotspot,” wrote Engadget’s Chris Velazco.

Still, with Google looking to beef up its search-around a location feature, improved photo data analyzing capabilities could certainly prove helpful to the company. It is still unclear, though, just how Jetpac will integrate into the larger Google ecosystem.

Jetpac announced on its website that it would be removing its apps from the App Store in the coming days, and ending support for them on September 15.

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