Google Lens, which was first announced almost four years ago, is one of Google’s unsung heroes, powering many of the capabilities that smartphone users take for granted these days. Lens is used to fuel image recognition in both Google Photos and Google Assistant, but it also has its own mobile app. Outside of smartphones, it doesn’t have much of a following, but that could change soon as Google attempts to integrate Lens features directly into Search results, at least in Chrome for the desktop.
Google Lens serves as a showcase for several of the company’s powerful computer capabilities. It recognizes items using image recognition and applies machine learning to retrieve important information about the object. While pointing a phone’s camera at an item or even a landmark, that feature comes in handy, but not when doing an Internet search on a desktop or laptop.
Lens, on the other hand, can be useful when you want to understand more about an image search result rather than simply the words. While Google has a specialized reverse image search, the procedure is more than a little time-consuming. Last month, it was disclosed that Google has been working on bringing Google Lens to the desktop for that reason, and fresh details clarify how it will operate.
Google Lens search can be started by right-clicking on an image or a section of the Search result page, according to a Reddit user. Users will be provided a rectangle to resize in order to choose a page portion. Lens’ search results will appear in a Chrome sidebar on the right after they release the mouse, similar to how Chrome displays its Reading List.
It’s a great addition to Google’s Search functionality, especially since it eliminates the need to take a screenshot or save the image in order to send it to Google’s reverse image search. The distribution schedule for this feature is still unknown, and it’s unclear whether it’ll be a Chrome-only feature or a more generic Google Search function.
