Google Goggles 1.3: Bring Out the Sudoku Champ in You

In January 2011, Google updated Goggles — its visual-search app, first released on Android in December 2009 and on iOS in October 2010 — to version 1.3, with two practical features and one publicity stunt.

The practical features: instant barcode scanning and print-ad recognition. Point the phone's camera at a barcode and, without pressing a button, Goggles would hover-research the product for you — a precursor to the scan-everything habits we all have now. The print-ad recognition expanded an experiment Google had begun the previous November, returning full search results for photographed advertisements rather than just the brand's mobile site.

The stunt: Google pit Goggles 1.3 against a Sudoku champion. In the demo video, a Google software engineer with a Goggles-equipped phone raced reigning Sudoku champion Tammy McLeod at solving a grid. The phone won — because the phone wasn't solving the puzzle so much as recognizing it and looking up the answer, which is both cheating and a perfect demonstration of what visual search is for.

Goggles itself would not survive the decade — Google folded its capabilities into Lens and general image search — but version 1.3 was the moment the concept clicked: point your camera at the world, and the internet answers.