Google acquires Portuguese 360-degree photography start-up

Google has acquired the Digisfera company. That is a Portuguese start-up that mainly deals with software for creating 360-degree photos. The Digisfera team joins Google’s Street View team.

The acquisition was announced on the Digisfera website. The amount involved in the acquisition has not been disclosed, but it is clear that the employees of the Portuguese start-up will work to improve Google’s Street View. Google takes 360-degree photos for this service and that is exactly what Digisfera specializes in. It therefore seems to be an ‘acquihire’, in which Google is mainly concerned with the employees and not so much with the technology developed.

Due to the takeover, some services of Digisfera will be discontinued. For example, the PanoTag tag service is no longer supported and the software can no longer be downloaded. The same applies to the Marzipano service, but its source code is made public under an open source license. With Marzipano it is possible to view ordinary photos in 360 degrees, with support for several browsers.