

Word Lens (Quest Visual) is Joining Google - dannyr
http://www.wordlens.com/

======
unreal37
It seems Word Lens was destined to join Google Translate and is a perfect
match for Glass.

At least they're not killing the app. Yet.

~~~
mortenjorck
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?

~~~
abraham
Google Translate has had offline support for a while.

[http://googletranslate.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-worlds-
langu...](http://googletranslate.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-worlds-languages-in-
your-pocket-no.html)

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zavulon
Language packs have been made free ("for limited time"), I'm going to grab
them while they're available

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CamperBob2
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.

------
james33
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.

~~~
andrewmunsell
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:

[https://www.andrewmunsell.com/blog/looking-through-google-
gl...](https://www.andrewmunsell.com/blog/looking-through-google-glass)

~~~
sahaskatta
The "ok glass, translate this" feature is a third-party app built by none
other than WordLens. It is not powered by Google Translate.

~~~
andrewmunsell
Interesting-- they didn't mention that. I guess that the acquisition makes
sense, then.

------
Oculus
_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!

~~~
pretz
I think you misspelled acquihired.

------
ericdykstra
Congrats to Otavio and the team! An amazing product and perfect match for
Google.

I look forward to seeing how this gets incorporated into various Google
products. Glass, Translate, and YouTube are the obvious ones to me right now.

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covercash
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.

~~~
ape4
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.

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telecuda
I show off this app to others more than I use it personally. The typical
reaction is "magic!" or "witchcraft!" It's really that simple and impressive.

~~~
ape4
Its well done for sure. It does this:

    
    
        - 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
    

All of these are solved problems.

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wallflower
Word Lens launched on News.YC 1,247 days ago.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2014555](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2014555)

Congrats to the Quest Visual team!

It was the first real amazing example I showed to people about the potential
of having a supercomputer (and a-half) in your pocket [1].

[1] iPhone 3GS MIPS ~ 1200 MIPS, Cray 2 ~ 800 MIPS

------
colinbartlett
Thanks for the journey but we're shutting things down.

Another one for the Tumblr:
[http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com](http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com)

~~~
pcl
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.

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eridius
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.

~~~
Oculus
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].

1 -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#Acquisition](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#Acquisition)

2 -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)#Hist...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_\(operating_system\)#History)

~~~
eridius
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?

~~~
cageface
_Google does what 's best for Google. Google doesn't do what's best for its
users._

Unlike every other for-profit business in the world?

(I didn't downvote, BTW)

~~~
eridius
_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).

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twrkit
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.

~~~
jf
QuestVisual ported WordLens to Glass themselves:
[http://blog.questvisual.com/post/67443954608/an-eye-
towards-...](http://blog.questvisual.com/post/67443954608/an-eye-towards-the-
future-with-word-lens-theres)

------
rdl
Wow, congratulations. I loved this product, especially for non-isolatin1
languages.

~~~
tobinfricke
It looks like they support Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, and
Russian. So the only "non-isolatin1" language is Russian?

~~~
rdl
They had some test code to do other languages when I talked to them. Thai in
particular is something I'd really like.

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danso
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](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.

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gaborcselle
Congrats Otavio and team!

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mrtron
Congrats!

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LoganCale
Goodbye, Word Lens.

