In my last blog post I discussed one of Google’s new products, the News Timeline. Another new product recently unveiled is “similar images”. This uses some very clever technology and a marriage between their search algo’s and the ability to scan an image to bring you further images closely related to your original image search.

An example on the site shows a search for “Paris” and lists results that include the Eiffel tower, a picture of Notre Dame, a city map of Paris and a snapshot of Ms. Hilton. Clicking similar images brings up further images of the same, many times showing the whole series in a release of shots. The algorithm is very clever in determining what falls into the same genre.

It is easy to pass a lot of time with this application, casually browsing galleries and slowly being taken adrift. Sometimes the algorithm serves up the downright obscure and one wonders what exactly the connection is – but then it just opens new paths to more unexplored stuff.

Similar Images is a most interesting development and one that gives us a glimpse of the technology that Google is putting into indexing images. It shows great promise for the future of image recognition and I am happy that the powers that be have given us a look at what is happening behind the closed doors at Google. I will be keeping my eye on where this leads…

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