It seems it took a long one year to see some visible results on the Google since the moment of acquisition of Neven Vision (that uses face detection technology to select only images that contain faces) .


Google Image Search offeres a new feature that allows to do some restrictions. By adding &imgtype=face at the end of the URL a user will be able to get all kinds of images, but all of them show faces.

What we can see at the present moment the only faces and news-related images categories. Other categories are on their way. How far can the Google go with that?

Speaking about images: there is a gossip circulating on the net that of passport photos would become a requirement for all Google Accounts. Would it really increase security? Or it would be treated as an extra complication by an average user?

passport photos would become a requirement for all Google Accounts

Do you mean actual, government issued passport photos or passport as a euphemism to mean some type of picture ID?

If you mean the government issued type, I find that highly unlikely. It wouldn't make much sense to use my Medicare or Driver's License ID to access Google's features, or a birth certificate or even my social security #. The two (gov ID and Google) are - blessedly - unrelated and though I'm not sure, I think it borders on illegal to request such documentation.

If you mean a regular photo ID, well, unless Google really ramps up detection criteria (like CIA standards) then maybe..otherwise, I can pretty much photoshop my way into anyone's account.

I like the more detailed media search - elements within an image and particuliarly a video sound interesting, and have a lot of bearing for advertisers to capitalize on. Mind you, Google can't even compete with Konterra or Intelli-text for some regular text features that these other adnetworks are profiting on. Maybe Google should look up the word "consolidation" before they byte (hahaha) off more than they can chew

Anyone hear of the vapourware Qaero, the European search engine? Looks like their research is making Google more competitive...

And it's only a matter of time before SEOs start stuffing pages full of images of clowns and chainsaw murderers in an attempt to rank.

(Assuming this isn't something made up, since there is no source quoted.)

Does this mean if I add &imgtype=butt I will get a different result?

Yeah, and the SERPS will be ***.

Speaking about images: there is a gossip circulating on the net that of passport photos would become a requirement for all Google Accounts. Would it really increase security? Or it would be treated as an extra complication by an average user?

I doubt Google will need official photos, otherwise they may turn into the Interpol with the database on its users.

I was also wondering why the image with somebody's face gives more value than the image of a snout?

Indexing images by faces is a logical step for Google Image and should appear also soon in Picasa, unless automatic face finding is not yet fast enough ! As a matter of fact, as all images retrieved by Google have been processed off-line while for indexing my personal photos using Picasa I might need real-time stuff !

Here is another demo of face image indexing (and tagging) using Google Image and a on-the-fly face detection:
http://www.idiap.ch/googleportrait/

You can also search image results for Paris Hilton: http://www.idiap.ch/googleportrait/i...y=Paris+Hilton
or even Angelina Jolie (http://www.uberreview.com/2007/02/go...on-system.htm).

Don't hesitate to send me any feedback, we are still looking for improvements. We plan next to use automatic face recognition using collected data (image + tags), applying the same technology we transfer to Bananasecurity (www.bananasecurity.ch) and to its free biometric lock screen (BananaScreen).