Google doesn’t change its desktop home page often, but a report by 9to5Google revealed the Tech giant has added a Lens button to its popular search bar on the homepage.
Rajan Patel, Google’s VP of engineering in charge of Search and Lens, also pointing out in a tweet.
“The Google homepage doesn’t change often, but today it did. We’re always working to expand the kinds of questions you can ask and improving how we answer them. Now you can ask visual questions easily from your desktop,” the VP tweeted.
Below is a screenshot of the Google Lens button on the Google home page for desktop:
While Google Images has long allowed users to find visually comparable images, Lens goes above and beyond by also attempting to provide contextual information about the object being viewed.
For instance, if you upload a photograph of a plant or animal, Google will try its best to identify it, along with lots of images that you can use as cross-references, and if you scan an image of a product, you will be presented with shopping results.
There are also a number of other features already integrated into the application. If you scan an image that contains text, you will be able to copy it and even translate it.
In addition, if you scan a QR code, it will provide information regarding the item. Google also provides you with a link to conduct a reverse image search, which will enable you to discover the original source of the image.
Anyone who has used Lens on Android or iOS will already be familiar with all of these functions, and some of them are even pre-installed in desktop operating systems such as macOS.
However, for users of systems that do not have those features, an easy-to-access version of Lens might become a multi-tool that is particularly useful for working with images.
Google Lens was initially released in 2017 as a Pixel-only feature, but it was rolled out to all Android and iOS smartphones in 2018 through Google Photos.
As time has passed, the service’s popularity has increased, to the point where Google believes it merits a prominent placement on the search engine’s front page.
