Google has revealed on its blog that it's bought photo recognition firm, Neven Vision for an undisclosed amount.

Neven Vision, which was set up in 2003, develops visual recognition technology currently being used by customers including the US Government and Coca Cola, and the company now has offices around the world.

Adrian Graham, Picasa Product Manager said in his blog that Neven's technology would be integrated into Google's photo album software to refine searches of personal photo collections. He said; "We've been working to make Picasa even better when it comes to searching for your own photos - to make finding them as easy as finding stuff on the web. Luckily we've found some people who share this goal, and are excited that the Neven Vision team is now part of Google."

Yahoo had pulled ahead of Google in the race to capture the online photo sharing audience with its purchase of the photo-management software Flickr in early 2005, but the possibility of a program being able to automatically sort your collections by the people in them may level the playing field, bringing more users back to Picasa.

The acquisition comes after rumours that Google failed to strike a deal with the start-up company Riya, who are currently developing a search engine that looks for relevant images based on information such as facial features and objects in samples users upload, late last year. According to reports in the blogosphere, Google had been offering a price of between $40 and $60 million.

The CEO of Riya, Munjal Shah, reacted to today's news on his blog with a hint of bitterness, as well as promises to deliver with Riya 2.0, saying; "Welcome to the realisation that looking inside images is important, Google."

For a full analysis of Google's current position and future business plans check out PC Plus issue 247.