Back in the 1980s, comedian Billy Crystal, in a Fernando Lamas impression, crooned, “Just looking into your eyes, darling, I can tell you have the legs of a dancer.” That was then. Now, what information will your social connections be able to glean from a picture of your face? Google ^[1] might have some ideas.

Although the company earlier claimed it has no interest in facial recognition technology, Google has purchased Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition ^[2] (PittPatt), which develops, er, facial recognition technology. The news comes as a bit of a surprise, since Google had earlier shelved plans to release a smartphone app for just that. Google Goggles would have let users access personal information through photos of people’s faces, notes TG Daily’s Emma Wollacott.

Why the about-face? According to PittPatt, the move is a “natural fit” for Google, since “computer vision technology” is at the core of many of the company’s products.

In a Google+ world, this is, indeed, interesting.

Read more at TG Daily ^[3].