Another interesting Google acquisition – they have just acquired a UK based firm Plink.

Plink provides an Android based application which allows users to take a picture of an art work and then have the app search for and provide information on the work and the artist. Their core technology will certainly help develop Google’s own mobile visual search tool Goggles.

There have been a host of companies looking at developing mobile specific search solutions (Taptu is one of the first that comes to mind) but a visually oriented solution seems like a clear winner. In fact a google entry for visual search throws up a host of companies with most of them being traditional searches where the end results are provided in user-friendly visual formats. However with Plink, the input data for the search is visual too which makes it extremely user-friendly.

The Company has certainly done well for themselves – launched 4 months ago, they actually reached 50,000 users in four weeks! And then a sweet exit – quite a bonus for the first time entrepreneurs.

Just a note, if the same technology is transposed to a product search, review and purchase app, we get closer to Snaptell which was acquired by Amazon last year. They claimed a click-through rate of 15% to online stores – an interesting performance parameter.

And why just ecommerce - I have a feeling there must be several other applications in the pipeline with a similar technology which can help increase the efficiency of advertising revenues for print media as well.