Local tech startup Idée Inc. will publicly launch a search engine named TinEye that will function the same with images as what Google Inc. does with text.
"This is the early days of multimedia searching," said chief executive Leila Boujnane. "It feels like we're at the same place Google was at years ago."
With a small number of dedicated staff and their several years of R&D work, Idée has managed to develop a set of algorithms that takes an image, compares it to about a half-billion indexed pictures, and generates relevant images and their url within milliseconds.
"Anyone who actually sells content wants to know where it is," said Idée co-founder and chief technology officer Paul Bloore. "No one else can do this, especially on the scale that we're doing."
TinEye will be helpful for publishers, online retailers, brand marketers and copyright compliance officers who want to track how products are being distributed on the Web.
The release of TinEye is Idée's another step at becoming a king in the image recognition industry. Its existing service is to tracks down publishers who use their copyrighted pictures and bills them as per value.
"It has lots of business applications and I don't even think they've scratched the surface," said Rick Segal, a partner with private equity firm JLA Ventures. "It's the kind of stuff that gets greedy little suits like me excited."
"For this kind of technology, there's a lot deep pockets already," said George Goodall, a senior research analyst with Info-Tech Research Group.
"I think [Idée] has a one-year window of opportunity to build the technology. If they fail to execute on that strategy in the next eight months, they could get swallowed up."
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