[qF]

Remember that this is done using clear full-frontal pictures, FRT drop significantly in accuracy with even the smallest change in angle. Not to mention sunglasses, (facial) hair obscuring parts of the face and different lighting conditions.

Current techniques that try to deal with such variation need several (clear) pictures from different angles to build a model of a face to be able to recognize a face.

I'd go with decades rather than years before the limitations mentioned are resolved.

[anigbrowl]

Try installing Picasa and spend a little time tagging your family photos. It's a little startling how good it is. It consistently tags me regardless of whether I have a beard or my glasses in any given picture. Likewise, it quickly IDed my parents in 40 year old family photos that they scanned and sent, based on recent images. Mrs. Browl and I enjoy photography as a hobby, I'm pretty sure Google could ID either of us with 90%+ accuracy from a photo taken on the street. With Facebook you have both the computers and the crowdsourcing at work, so their tagging may be even better.

[mdemare]

Is it much better than iPhoto? Because that's laughably bad.

[anigbrowl]

I don't have iPhoto, but I'm a little scared by how good Picasa is. I have about a prosumer level of knowledge - not enough to develop image-processing SW, but enough to enjoy reading SIGgraph papers.