Google buys out Jetpac

PEOPLE have posted some amazing pictures from all over the world. And now Google has big plans to turn them into an encompassing urban guide.

A sign is posted outside of the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California 21/01/2010.

TECH giant Google has purchased the start-up Jetpac, creator of software that analyses the pictures cybernauts post on the internet and works up urban guides from the information it extracts from them, the Jetpac web site says.

Founded in 2011 with headquarters in San Francisco, Jetpac compiles information from the photos that users post on social networks — for example on Instagram, the property of Facebook — and by means of an advanced system of artificial intelligence, creates guides with the information it extracts from them.

Screen capture from Jetpac City Guide shows people grinning at the Hotel Illawarra in Wollongong.

The usual pictures of food, buildings, people and decorative elements circulated by Instagram enrich the useful content of Jetpac’s online guides to the habits, activities, curiosities and leisure-time possibilities that each city has to offer.

The monetary value of the acquisition has not been revealed.

Originally published as Google buys out Jetpac