Google Buys iPhone Apps Developer JetPac

NY: Google Inc is buying JetPac Inc, a startup that designs social travel applications for Apple's iPhone. The startup announced the acquisition via its website on Friday, without providing details.

"We'll be removing Jetpac's apps from the App Store in the coming days, and ending support for them on 9/15," stated a posting on JetPac's homepage

San Francisco-based JetPac currently has three iPhone apps listed on Apple's App Store. The first one, called, Jetpac City Guides uses pictures from various social networking sites to create city guides. According to its listing, the app can be used to find things like 'Bars Women Love', 'Hipster Hangouts', 'Most Scenic Views', 'Happiest Places in Town', and more.

Another app called Spotter by Jetpac - Object Recognition Real-Time lets users identify objects in realtime by pointing their phone at them. The app then uses 'Deep Belief Object Recognition' to identify what the object is.

The developers say they trained the "Deep Belief Convoluted Neural Network on a million photos, and like a brain, it learned concepts of textures, shapes and patterns, and combined those to recognize most common objects, including breeds of dogs and types of plants. It's not trained to recognise people yet, so will guess objects that people interact with."

The company's third offering is a trainer app for its object recognition network.

Earlier this year, Google bought Nest Labs Inc, which makes smart thermostat and smoke alarms, for $3.2 billion, making the deal one of the largest in Google's history.

Google was not available for comment outside of normal business hours.