Google Goggles – the app that lets you search by just taking pictures has finally made its debut on the iphone. The app itself launched in Google Labs in December last year. and recognizes the text within it, creating search results for things like books and business cards. It also recognizes landmarks, paintings or other historical objects. Earlier this year, Google Goggles gained the ability to translate text in photos.Now that Goggles is 10 months older and able to recognize more objects with increasing accuracy, the search giant has decided that it’s time for iPhone users to have the power of visual search in their pockets as well. The functionality is being added to the newest edition of the Google Mobile App for iPhone [iTunes link].

Goggles essentially works the same as its Android counterpart: It recognizes things like landmarks, logos and book covers, but isn’t able to recognize food or animals. Clearly, though, the company is working on that functionality; if Google can nail it, Goggles would definitely become a must-have killer app.

Goggles isn’t available for every iPhone user, though; it’s enabled for English-speaking users only at the moment, and because it needs a camera that can auto-focus, it only works on an iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 running iOS 4.0 or better.

I tried it on a copy of Tom Peters, The pursuit of WOW and the results were not great but as ever it is pretty ground breaking stuff.

See the demo below.

Let us know what you think of Google Goggles?

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