Is signing into your Google account via facial recognition on the cards soon? It might just be, seeing that software development company, Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition (PittPatt), has announced that it has been acquired by Google. PittPatt develops face recognition software for images as well as video. The financial terms of the acquisition were not provided.

PittPatt was founded in 2004 by three PhD graduates from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), following nearly a decade of research into object recognition. Dr. Henry Schneiderman (president and chief executive officer) formed the company along with Dr. Michael Nechyba (vice president of Research & Development) and Dr. Michael A. Sipe (vice president of Product Development).

“We've worked hard to advance the research and technology in many important ways and have seen our technology come to life in some very interesting products,” the PittPatt team posted on their site.  

“At Google, computer vision technology is already at the core of many existing products (such as Image Search, YouTube, Picasa, and Goggles), so it's a natural fit to join Google and bring the benefits of our research and technology to a wider audience. We will continue to tap the potential of computer vision in applications that range from simple photo organization to complex video and mobile applications.”

 

In related news, Google also recently launched of its new URL shortcut, g.co, which will only link to official Google products and services and announced that it will be closing the Google Labs website.