I imagine the app will come down within a month or two of the transition, but it poses an interesting question:
The Google Translate app is a native front-end to the Google Translate service. Word Lens actually does its translation on the device itself, with no need for cellular service in whatever country you may be exploring. Will Google add an offline photo translation mode, or will the Word Lens tech move to the cloud?
Not relying on the cloud is really important when you are traveling. Roaming is killer expensive and figuring out how to get a native phone plan in a new country without being able to read the signs is hard.
Seeing Word Lens in action for the first time is the sort of thing that only happens a few times in your life. I didn't really "get" how important smartphones in general and the iPhone in particular were going to be until I saw Word Lens.
Word Lens has its flaws, but it's like looking into a crystal ball that shows you the Star Trek future we were all promised as kids but have been mostly denied so far. Congratulations, this acquisition really was well-deserved.
Figured this would have been an obvious acquisition for Google years ago, surprised it took so long. Obviously a perfect fit, and even more-so now with Glass.
Actually, Google Glass already has this functionality. There's no real difference between the two, other than Google's implementation works where you're looking instead of requiring you to point your phone in a specific direction.
I wrote about my experience with it during Google's Seattle Through Glass event:
As a thank you to everybody who supported us on our journey, we've made both the app and the language packs free to download for a limited time
Anyone who doesn't have Word Lens yet should certainly download it now as this is an awesome deal that rarely happens with other startups once they're acquired!
I always thought it would be cool for this app to recognize URLs in the real world. Instead of overlaying the translation, it would overlay blue text and an underline.
Nice. Make it clickable you're saying of course. Perhaps save the image with clickable URL so you can get it later if you're on the subway or offline for other reason.
- OCR text
- Translate (you have to tell it the languages to use)
- Take a guess at the font and font color
- Erase the text (just replace with the background color?)
- Display the new text
Congrats to Otavio and the WordLens team...I had the pleasure of meeting him at what must have been one of the weirdest tech awards thing I've been to (http://en.www.netexplo.org/laureat/wordlens)...back then, one of the annoying implementation obstacles was the iphones 10MB limit for apps over 3G (so obviously the language packs couldn't be built in)...The technology is pretty cool now, and so it was amazing to see in action 2+ years ago.
I doubt it... this seems like a really good fit for Google. I expect that the app will go away, but I'd be surprised if the tech isn't integrated into the Google Now app or something like that.
While it does technically fit Our Incredible Journey's requirements (acquisition, shutting down original product, use of the word "journey"), Word Lens has one very nice exception: It's a truly native app that does its translation on-device rather than in the cloud. You'll be able to use the app and its language packs for years.
Another cool promising product being absorbed by Google. I guess congratulations are in order to the Word Lens authors for the presumably large amount of money they just received. But otherwise, I can't see how this is good for their users.
Despite its actions historically, Google has shown the ability to incubate a startup and provide the resources it needs to reach levels of success previously unimaginable. Two such examples are Google Maps [1] & Android [2].
I didn't realize Google Maps was an acquire. But that was Google from 10 years ago, which is a very different company than the Google of today.
Google does what's best for Google. Google doesn't do what's best for its users. Its users aren't its customers (its customers are advertisers). If Google does something that appears to be good for its users, it's because it's good for Google as a company.
Furthermore, when Google acquires a product/company, it does not do so because it wants to further that product/company's goals. It does so because it wants to further its own goals.
Basically, Word Lens is joining the Google Translate team. But that does not necessarily mean the Word Lens functionality will be put in the iOS Translate app. Google will do that if they think it's good for Google, but I would not be in the least surprised to see them reserve that functionality for e.g. Android or Google Glass.
Edit: Whomever downvoted me, care to explain your reasoning?
Unlike every other for-profit business in the world?
For most companies, their users are their customers. Doing right by their customers means doing right by their users.
But Google's customers are their advertisers, and their users are their product. Facebook and Twitter are the only other examples I can think of of companies with massive user bases who consider their users to be their product (except Facebook and Twitter are relatively focused on their core product, whereas Google seems to be trying to do pretty much everything under the sun).
Can you elaborate on why you view this as not being good for their users?
The functionality will probably be integrated into Google Translate (or perhaps Google Goggles and Glass) and the Wordlens app will disappear, but I don't see why that should be a bad thing. Is it because you fear Google won't deliver the same functionality on iOS, or is there something else that I am not considering?
The functionality will probably be integrated into Google Translate
That right there is the issue. Will it? I imagine Google will definitely want to put it into Google Glass. They'll likely put it into the Google Translate app for Android. But it's not clear at all whether they'll put it into Google Translate for iOS. It depends on whether they think it makes more sense to make Google Translate for iOS as good as it can be, or whether it makes more sense to give Android/Glass a competitive advantage (similar to how they refused to put turn-by-turn directions in the iOS Google Maps back before Apple Maps; they considered it a competitive advantage to restrict that functionality to Android).
I tried the Glass about 2 months ago, and one of the demos was a Word Lens feature. Worked pretty well too. So either they licensed it or just plain stole the idea and then bought them as retroactive immunity.
