Searching for photos with Google will soon look different
25 years of Google Images
When Google started 27 years ago, it wasn’t possible to search for images at all. Then you only had the search bar for regular websites and you had to make do with that. However, it wasn’t long before the ability to search for images was added. Although many people only discovered it later and started using it, the option has been around for 25 years. And we have Jennifer Lopez to thank for that. Not that she programmed it together, but her rather revealing green Versage dress that she wore to the Grammys. What was the case: people would search for that dress in text on Google, but of course they mainly wanted to see an image. Reason for Google to start searching for images. A lot has been added, such as filters that allow you to search for large files, but also the option to search for a reverse image, which means that you put an image in Google Images and it will then see where else the image can be found. A feature that became particularly popular in the MTV series Catfish, in which presenter Nev could easily look up whether someone on social media was perhaps using someone else’s photos to catfish someone: in other words, it could be fooled.
New features
Today, the image search is still mainly used to simply find an image, but Google is planning to change the homepage. Instead of the dry search bar you click on images.google.com you will soon see images that match your interests, just as you will see news items in Discover that match what you normally read. So before you have even searched, you will see all kinds of images, based on what you do on the internet. Collections will also return, where you get a kind of gallery at the top of a menu of images that you have saved so that you can quickly access them again. Maybe it is a photo of yourself that you often use as a profile photo, or something else. In addition, Google is going to add something to it and that is quite different: it wants you to be able to generate images within images with AI. Now Google is also very good at this with its Nano Banana and it has been possible for some time, so now it is simply added to Google Images. You can consciously search for AI images in your search and Google will then generate them. Please note that this will move the normal search results down.