Word Lens is one of the most futuristic apps to ever come out in a long time. Not every day we see an app with this much innovation, and now the technology is owned by Google. It's a good fit since Translate is one of the most used language translator apps on the web, and Word Lens is the most innovative language translator app on mobile.
Quest Visual, the guys behind Word Lens, announced that it was acquired by Google, though the company did not state how much the company paid.
"With Word Lens, we've seen the beginnings of what's possible when we harness the power of mobile devices to 'see the world in your language.'"
"By joining Google, we can incorporate Quest Visual's technology into Google Translate's broad language coverage and translation capabilities in the future," says Quest Visual on its website.
For those unaware, Word Lens is an augmented reality language translator app. Just point your phone's camera at the words you would like to be translated, and watch as it changes in real-time before your eyes. It's pretty spectacular, and now that it is owned by Google, you can expect the company to do away with the app and incorporate the technology into Translate.
While Word Lens is an innovative and refreshing experience, there was one major downside. It only supported a limited amount of language, which includes English, Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese. Google Translate, on the other hand, supports around 345 languages, and over 10,000 language pairs.
This acquisition is a huge blow to Apple, since the app was one of the best to ever grace the iPhone and featured prominently in an iPhone commercial not too long ago. We have the feeling Apple is not feeling well about the turn of events that took place, but that's just the order of business.
Currently, the Google Translate app does something similar to Word Lens, though it requires the user to take a picture and then scans the image before releasing the translated text. Word Lens' way of doing this is much more seamless, and we can see it improving the Translate app a great deal.
Furthermore, one doesn't need an Internet connection for Word Lens to work at optimal performance, though that could be due to the lackluster language options.
To celebrate the company's move to Google, Quest Visual has made Word Lens and all available language packs free to download, so you might want to get your fingers on it now before it goes away for good.
