How Google's New Face Recognition Tech Could Change The Web's Future

Google just bought a high-tech face recognition unit called Pitt Patt. Built into Google products, it could change everything about the web. Yes, everything.

Pitt Patt was founded in 2004 as a spin-off firm built upon a decade of research into object recognition by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University. Now it's a Google property. What will the Net behemoth be able to do with Pitt Patt's technology? Almost anything to do with advanced face recognition, from video to Picasa's popular images to photos uploaded and shared via Google+. Pitt Patt (for Pittsburgh Pattern recognition) developed a highly successful system for recognizing people's faces. At its core are two algorithms that recognize faces -- one mostly front-on with a yaw angle of 18 degrees and one that can ID people who've tilted their faces up to 36 degrees from head-on. It's also capable of tracking people and objects -- meaning it's good for video feeds, too--and has a complex API to allow for sophisticated integration into different products.