Summary
You might turn to Google Images to find inspiration for a hobby or interest, but the standard experience isn’t the best when you don’t have a specific search in mind. In an attempt to make Image Search better for these situations, Google is preparing a new Pinterest-like “Images” tab.
As you would expect, the standard Google Image search works essentially like a text-based search. If you search for “woodworking,” you’ll be presented with photos of people doing woodworking. But with this new dedicated tab, currently rolling out to beta users on version 16.23.71 of the Google app, it’s an entirely new experience. It’s essentially a personalized visual discovery engine with publicly available images from Google Search.
When you dive into the Images tab for the first time, you’ll be prompted to pick at least three categories that pique your interest—anything from food & drink to home decor to vehicles. Google then takes those interests and creates a feed based on them. Another way to think of it is a Google Discover feed purely for images.
Once you’re in, interacting with these images is pretty basic. Tapping an image brings up the usual Google Image info screen, where you may visit the website, share it, save to a collection for later, or scroll down to view similar images. A long press also allows you to share, save to a collection, or scan it with Google Lens to learn more about what you’re seeing. And if something isn’t quite hitting the mark, you can easily hide images from your feed, which should help Google understand your preferences better.
I’m sure this has some value for some people, but it doesn’t seem very useful right now. It feels like I’m spying on a Google Image Search that someone else did. However, we’re still in the very early days, so I may just need to use it more and let it get better. Google continues to evolve how it works—for better or worse—and this is yet another example of that.
