Google's ZXing

Another small mobile announcement by Google.

"ZXing (pronounced "zebra crossing") is an open-source, multi-format 1D/2D barcode reader library implemented in Java. Our goal is to support decoding of QR Codes, Data Matrix, and the UPC family of 1D barcodes. It will provide clients for J2ME, J2SE, and Android."

As Andreas Constantinou points out in his blog post this is hardly surprising - connecting the physical world via QR codes to mobiles is another mobile channel Google wants to fully exploit.

Driving more people to access the internet and ultimately ad-supported search and web content I would imagine, aligns to their mobile strategy.

Nokia have been pushing QR and barcodes for a long time and most of the nseries and eseries now include a native scanner/reader application.
I've been using them for a while (kaywa being the first on I tried that was 3rd party), way more convenient than typing in URL's on a phone keypad.

I suspect we will start seeing them much more frequently over the next 2-3 years in Europe as cosumers realise what they are - they seem to be commonplace in Asia.
Interestingly I've started seeing them on snail-mail post and on medicine bottles too, so some companies are beginning to adopt them for tracking /promotion etc...