Google Invests in Image Monetization Firm Pixazza

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on March 25, 2009 - 8:37am.

Mountain View, Calif. - Google (NASD: GOOG) has participated in a $5.75 million first investment round for Pixazza, a service that adds links to purchase items seen in online photos.

The round also included investments from August Capital, CMEA Capital, and individuals including Ron Conway, former eBay COO Maynard Webb, and Facebook CFO Gideon Yu.

Founded in 2008, Mountain View, Calif.-based Pixazza is a tool that Web publishers can install that lets users mouse over items in photos, to reveal information and pricing about products similar in look in style to the one that caught their eye, and click through to make purchases.

The items are identified in photos by a "proprietary crowdsourcing platform, enlisting a distributed workforce of product experts to match products inside an image with similar items from its network of advertisers."

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} "Pixazza hopes to do for images what Google's AdSense did for web pages," said Bob Lisbonne, CEO of Pixazza.

http://www.pixazza.com