acquires

Google has acquired PittPatt, a company focused on facial recognition in photos, reports Wall Street Journal. While the terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, Google will be receiving PittPatt’s brainy employees. PittPatt was founded by three “image analysis” and “pattern recognition” specialists whom have PhD’s from Carnegie Mellon University. PitPatt’s technology could go into a number of products — like Google Goggles or Google+.

Something worth noting is what Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt had to say at AllThingsD’s D9 conference in May regarding the matter of facial recognition:

Schmidt says he does have some concerns about the limits of technology, including combining face recognition with other technologies. Google, with Goggles, had moved pretty far down that path, but has stopped because of the implications.

“We built that technology and we withheld it,” Schmidt says.

People could use the stuff in a bad way in addition to a very good way.

A spokesperson told WSJ:

We’ve said that we won’t add face recognition to our apps or product features unless we have strong privacy protections in place, and that’s still the case