Google Goggles Now Reads Print Ads and … Sudoku

From the cool stuff department, Google’s Goggles mobile visual search tool can now read print ads and (the cool part) Sudoku boards.

As part of a new update that includes faster scans, Goggles will now recognize any newspaper or magazine ad in major publications printed after August 2010. This not only lets users inquire more about products advertised in print, but is also emblematic of evolutions in “visual search.”

The Sudoku feature is in the latter bucket … more of a novelty to show what visual search  is capable of. Specifically it will scan any Sudoku board, match the image against its database of boards and then return results on the answers.

This is more cool than it is useful, but again, a big symbolic step forward for visual search and an indication of the many applications to come. We’ll discuss advancements to visual and voice search on a webinar tomorrow, among many other topics.

In the meantime, a cool video of the new feature in action is below.