Two days ago we came across this video of the new Google Goggles App. In Google’s own words it is a “Visual Search Application”. You should go and check out the video, we think it is a really cool program. Naturally, it also has a lot of potential for improvement (so it seems), but the basic functionality already appears to provide a lot of utility. Not only can you search by taking a photograph, you can also use the GPS-compass combination to get some really useful augmented reality features, like names and reviews of local businesses in your immediate environment. Bottom line, it’s a great app!

At the same time, it makes clear that Google is planning to become the augmented reality industry leader – at least regarding the search element of augmented reality. This also relates to our blog post on augmented reality, in which we described this particular segment as one with a bright future. Of course, for a company like Google this makes complete sense. But it also means very strong competition for every start-up in the visual search and augmented reality field. Although Google does not really control the Android platform like Apple does the App Store, this has some implications for developers and their choice of platform to develop for.

We talked about this before regarding Apple, when they appeared to be looking for engineers to build gaming apps. It is common sense that large corporations like Google and Apple have in interest in various strategic markets. But the fact that an infrastructure provider (App Store, Android Market) is getting into the market to compete with market participants (app developers) should not necessarily be taken lightly. This will not only shake up the ground base of developers, it is sure to shake up big existing industries, like int the case of Google vs. TomTom.

Again that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, but it substantiates the point that in the future, besides Apple being able to directly have a say regarding your business destiny, they might also just be following the Google footsteps and enter into your market. And again, we love Apple and the App Store and think it is here to stay in the future, but this is the main reason why for developers, multiple options must be held open (many platforms with user-reach). And for you, the developer, this can only mean: diversify to different platforms when you have the chance.

That said, we will move away from the topic for some time and further focus on what is really important to us: app marketing.