I suspect Google’s decision to buy Plink, was not motivated by the start-ups amazing ability to analyze mobile pictures of artwork and recognize them.

I’m confident that Google’s not going to launch Google Art Critic anytime soon.

However, it’s entirely possible that Google has acquired Plink simply to gain access to the two PhD students–Mark Cummins and James Philbin–behind the visual recognition app.

In fact, according to a blog post by the founders, they’re ready to abandon their PlinkArt app and roll-up their sleeves for Google:

PlinkArt will continue to be available for download and work as it currently does today. However, we won’t be updating the app and will instead focus our development efforts on Google Goggles, so you’ll see new functionality appearing there in the future.

Of course, no one can blame them for selling their company. It’s barely 4 months old and now they’ll have Google’s billions of dollars at their disposal and get to work on Google Goggles.