Archives for March 2016

New Visual Search Photo Features from Google

03/29/2016 by Bill Slawski

These details come from an anonymous source who also gave us a bit more details on the project. The report states there will be a new feature integrated, allowing users to outline specific areas of the image in order to directly target their searches.

In Google Goggles, one can only search the whole image, which has proven to bring plenty of discrepancies. Images often display plenty of distractions, background items and other objects that may throw off a search result. According to the sketch provided, the system will also be able to recommend retailers for purchasing products, as well as other details.

Furthermore, it is said this technology has also been tested in “wearable computing devices”. This could suggest this technology may come to products like Google Glass and possibly even VR (or AR) headsets.

Google Granted Patent on How Self-Driving Cars Might Handle Tailgaters

03/22/2016 by Bill Slawski

Self-Driving Car

Google’s self driving cars have covered over a million miles of roadway, and recently, one of them crashed into a slow moving bus. Details about the accident can be found in Google’s bus crash is changing the conversation around self-driving cars. Oddly timed, but appropriate, Google seems to have been working on the issue that caused that problem, as we are told in this article: A Month After Google’s Car Hit a Bus, Google Got a Patent for Robot Cars to Detect Buses.

Because of the timing of that patent, I’m not surprised by another one being granted today involving self-driving cars, on how it might respond to tailgaters. That patent is:

Detecting and responding to tailgaters
Inventors: Dmitri A. Dolgov, Philip Nemec, Anne Kristiina Aula
Assigned to: Google
United States Patent 9,290,181
Granted March 22, 2016
Filed: May 4, 2015

Google Assigns 148 Medical Patents to Verily Life Sciences

03/14/2016 by Bill Slawski

Back in September of 2009, I wrote a blog post that I titled Google’s 10 Oddest Patents. The first of those that I included in that list was one named Instrument for medical purposes, I included it mostly because Google was a search company, and it felt odd that Google would have a patent on a medical process. That one used “ultrasonic sound to investigate the structural makeup of biological tissue in organs and vessels.”

Times have changed, and since that time, Google has restructured and put itself under a holding company structure with the name Alphabet running all elements of the company. A branch of the Company had evolved that was being referred to as “Google Life Sciences,” and it changed names recently as well, to Verily Life Sciences.

What role and what kind of impact might these new subsidiary have? I was wondering if Google would make changes to the patent assignments it had made along with the name changes, and I was surprised to see them do so, where they assigned 148 patents to Verily Life Sciences on two different days. It’s an interesting list, and I’ve provided it here. They may technically have ownership under other patents as well, but this list points to a number that could possibly become products that the company offers to the public, after any government approval that they may need to pursue.

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Archives for March 2016