Quest Visual, Inc. was an American

private company A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose Stock, shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in their respective listed markets. Instead, the Private equi ...

that developed

Word Lens Word Lens was an augmented reality translation application from Quest Visual. Word Lens used the built-in cameras on smartphones and similar devices to quickly scan and identify foreign text (such as that found in a sign or a menu), and then tra ...

, an

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR), also known as mixed reality (MR), is a technology that overlays real-time 3D computer graphics, 3D-rendered computer graphics onto a portion of the real world through a display, such as a handheld device or head-mounted ...

translation application. In May 2014, the company was acquired by

Google, Inc Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

Company

Quest Visual was founded by a former video game developer Otavio Good in 2009. At the time of acquisition, the company had 4 full-time employees (Good, John DeWeese, Bryan Lin, and Eric Park,) and a contractor, Maia Good. The details of the acquisition have not been released.

Products

Quest Visual's first product, Word Lens 1.0, was released on December 16, 2010, and was available in 2015 as Word Lens 2.2.3 for

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

iPod The iPod is a series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices that were designed and marketed by Apple Inc. from 2001 to 2022. The iPod Classic#1st generation, first version was released on November 10, 2001, about mon ...

, and

iPad The iPad is a brand of tablet computers developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple that run the company's mobile operating systems iOS and later iPadOS. The IPad (1st generation), first-generation iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010. ...

through

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

, as well as for a selection of

Android Android most commonly refers to: *Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), a mobile operating system primarily developed by Google * Android TV, a operating system developed ...

smartphones through

Google Play Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store, Play Store, or sometimes the Android Store (and was formerly Android Market), is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certifie ...

. It was unavailable as of 2021. At

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

's unveiling of its Glass Development Kit in November 2013, the translation capabilities of Word Lens were also demonstrated on

Google Glass Google Glass, or simply Glass, is a discontinued brand of smart glasses developed by Google's X Development (formerly Google X), with a mission of producing a ubiquitous computer. Google Glass displays information to the wearer using a head-u ...

. According to a January 2014 ''New York Times'' article, Word Lens is currently free for Google Glass. Google also made all Word Lens language packs freely available for a "limited time". Word Lens capabilities were incorporated into the

Google Translate Google Translate is a multilingualism, multilingual neural machine translation, neural machine translation service developed by Google to translation, translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a web applic ...

app and released on January 14, 2015. The company did not have any other products by the time of acquisition.

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

Quest Visual
homepage * Word Len
on iTunes

Original video demonstration
of Word Lens * Otavio Goo
explains
Word Lens 1.0.1 (interview with

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency ...

) Companies based in San Francisco Defunct software companies of the United States Google acquisitions 2009 establishments in California Software companies established in 2009 2015 disestablishments in California Software companies disestablished in 2015 2015 mergers and acquisitions

Company

Products

See also

References

External links