Google has bought social travel app JetPac, as the internet giant continues to enhance its local search data.
JetPac provides users with free city guides based on its analysis of public Facebook and Instagram photos, giving them contextual information on the local area.
Users can find things such as the best views in a city, Irish Pubs in the area, and local hipster hangouts.
The app had even added ‘smile recognition’ technology to tell users how happy people are at a given city.
It also claims it can “spot lipstick, blue sky views, hipster mustaches and more” all through advanced image processing on billions of photos.
The app began as a social travel guide on the iPad, but later developed its use of Instagram data to create a visual city guide of more than 6,000 cities worldwide.
The San Francisco-based company has created city guides for places as far reaching as Kathmandu.
A statement on JetPac’s website reads: “We’re joining Google! Thank you for all your interest and support. We look forward to working on exciting projects with our colleagues at Google. We’ll be removing Jetpac’s apps from the App Store in the coming days, and ending support for them on 9/15.”
How Google will integrate the app remains to be seen, but JetPac could be useful on Google+, where the likes of Stories for travel albums, Auto-Awesome filters, and automatic hashtags could benefit from JetPac’s tech.
JetPac could also boost Google Now and Google Maps search results, especially when it comes to nearby places of interest that would align with the users’ interests.
