???? – 2019retired
BBM (software)
“Read receipts and the little D — you always let us know you cared.”
“Point, shoot, learn. It taught our cameras to read the world.”
Google Goggles was an image recognition app that let your phone's camera do the searching. Snap a picture of a famous landmark and it would tell you all about it; photograph a product's barcode and you'd get the full rundown. For a while, it felt like the future was as simple as pointing at something and wondering out loud.
In August 2018, Google quietly folded Goggles into its broader visual search efforts and moved on. What it left behind is the everyday expectation that a photo can be a question — a habit so natural now we forget someone had to invent it.
Spotted something wrong? Every fact on this page traces to a dated source. Fixes make the graveyard better for everyone.
“Read receipts and the little D — you always let us know you cared.”
“Ahead of its time by exactly one inbox.”
“The big canvas with the little stylus habit, gone but still drawing applause.”