Google’s putting its Lens image search right on its home page

Google has been integrating its Lens image recognition technologyFor quite some time, several of its products have been integrated into it. Google PhotosAnd Chrome, but now it’s putting it front and center. As 9to5GoogleThese are the points, Google’s added a Lens button right to its home page, in its famous search bar. That’s a big deal, Rajan Patel, a vice president of engineering at Google who’s in charge of Search and Lens — as he said on Tuesday, the Google homepage doesn’t change often.

Clicking the Lens button (a small camera with Google-y colors), prompts you upload an image or to paste a URL. Once you do so, you’ll be taken to a page that’s pretty familiar if you’ve ever used the Lens app or any of its other integrations.

Google Images has let you search for similar-looking pictures for quite a while now, but Lens goes well beyond that; it also tries to give you information about what’s in the picture. If you scan a picture of a product, you’ll be greeted with shopping results, and if you upload a picture of a plant or animal, Google will do its best to tell you what it is, with plenty of images that you can use to cross-reference.

There’s also several other built-in features. If you scan an image containing text you’ll be able to copy and even translate it. And if you scan a QR code it’ll give you info about it. Google provides a link for a reverse image look to locate the origin of the QR code.

These features are not surprising to anyone who has used Lens on Android or iOS. Some of them even come built into desktop operating system like macOS. An easy-to-use version of Lens is available for users who do not have those features.