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September 14, 2010

Quiksee Acquired by Google

The Israeli startup Quiksee confirmed that it has been acquired by Google and its employees will join the Google Geo team. "Quiksee is an Internet start-up company that focuses on creating location based interactive videos. Our vision is to fill the world maps with Quiksee tours that will let people virtually travel across the planet as if they were there," explains Quicksee's site.

Haaretz says that "the firm's technology is regarded as the missing link in Google's Street View service (used by both Google Maps and Google Earth), which allows users to view photos along numerous streets around the world". Quiksee's software allowed you to create interactive panoramic tours from your videos, without having to use a Street View camera. TechCrunch speculates that Google could "accept geo-tagged, 3D panoramas uploaded by consumers" to improve Google Maps.



Here's a video that shows how Quiksee could integrate with Google Street View:



Google might even use Quiksee to add interactive Street View videos to Google Maps, like the ones demoed by Microsoft's Blaise Agüera y Arcas at a TED conference.

8 comments:

  1. It's like we make our own Street View Map, but much more directions. They just need to fix the platform and ready to be implemented in other Google Products.

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  2. is there a link with social-xxl? acquired or not?
    http://blog.dumeny.com/post/1115851572/whos-social-xxl

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  3. I don't know how many people are going to enjoy knowing that they could go to a public place and then end up being online for the map of the area and the tour. It kinda looks like it is going to far. What about the pictures of the children who end up in the video? I didn't think it was legal to show children?

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  4. Anybody else think the music is HIGHLY similar to the 'Help yourself to Stouffer's Pizza' jingle?

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  5. @albucian. If Google is legally required to hide faces (is it?), maybe it has some kind auto facial recognition/auto-blur-the-faces technology?

    This is about the only thing that would make sense to me, given Google's business model. I have a very hard time seeing thousands of employees sifting through videos and blurring out hours of faces.

    As for the legal issue, I feel far from convinced that Google is legally required to blur any/all faces (unless requested by the owners of the faces). Is it?

    If someone feels up to doing the legal research, I'd love to see an answer, here (as in here in the comments).

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  6. Nice vid. guys...
    Its so very good..
    I like it..

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  7. Does anybody knows how much was the deal for?

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