Google buys mobile visual search startup as part of aim to acquire at least one company a month

Google has made its first ever UK acquisition, buying mobile visual search startup Plink for an undisclosed sum.

The acquisition follows chief executive Eric Schmidt's statement that Google is aiming to acquire at least one company each month – as well as recruit more staff – as it expands the company post-recession.

Founded by PhD students Mark Cummins and James Philbin, Plink's first product was PlinkArt, a visual recognition app for mobile that analyses pictures of well-known artworks and paintings and identifies them. Users can then share the photo with friends and also click through to buy a poster version.

The developers claim the app was downloaded more than 50,000 times in the six weeks following launch, and Plink have also held discussions with galleries including the Tate over potential partnerships.

The two founders will work on Google Goggles, the search giant's visual search project.

Cummins and Philbin founded Plink nearly two year ago while PhD students at the University of Oxford's mobile robotics and visual geometry groups in the department of engineering.

The app was brought to Google's attention during the Android Develop Challenge in December last year, an initiative to promote innovative new applications for Google's mobile platform, when the pair won $100,000 – Plink's sole funding to date.

"It's time to be much more optimistic about the European tech startup scene," said Anil Hansjee, Google's head of corporate development for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

"There is a lot of innovation here and now the tech eco-system across academia, corporates, startups, venture capital, and government is responding and supporting this effort."

Hansjee said despite being an early stage company, Plink had "taken advantage of many of the ecosystem's offerings" to establish itself.

The acqusition took just three months and will mean that both engineers move to the Google Gears project base in Santa Monica, California. The pair were unable to say how much product development would continue for PlinkArt, including an iPhone app, saying that all their new features and development work would be appearing in new Google products.

James Philbin explained how Plink's technology works: "It picks out repeatable elements from the image you take and comes out with a statistical representation of them." That process works even at different angles and different lighting conditions.

"We found our way into art almost by accident, because we were really interested in visual search. But art is compelling space because it is so empty. There isn't even a definitive site for art," said Philbin.

Plink used AllPoster.com's affiliate programme to populate the visual information in their database, alongside Wikipedia content for information on artists. Cummins said the app has great potential for museum goers and for guided tours.

"You can start doing some really interesting things when you have recommendation data, like personalised tours based on your favourite paintings. Museums are very interested in social sharing and Facebook."

Cummins said the two had the classic startup dilemma of deciding whether to accept Google's offer – or to acknowledge that endorsement of the product and keep developing independently. But they opted instead to accept Google's offer and become the first UK startup to be bought by the technology giant.

"It feels good, yeah," said Philbin. "I'm not complaining."