This has gone hand in hand with our ongoing advancements in AI, which help us better understand information in its many forms — whether it’s text, audio, images or videos.

As part of this evolution, we’ve made it easier to express what you’re looking for in ways that are more natural and intuitive. For instance, you can search with your voice, or you can search with your camera using Lens.

And recently, we’ve been testing how generative AI’s ability to understand natural language makes it possible to ask questions on Search in a more natural way.

Ultimately, we envision a future where you can search any way, anywhere you want. Now, as we enter 2024, we’re introducing two major updates that bring this vision closer to reality: Circle to Search and an AI-powered multisearch experience. Let’s take a look at what’s ahead.

Circle (or highlight or scribble) to Search 

Today we unveiled Circle to Search, a new way to search anything on your Android phone screen without switching apps. With a simple gesture, you can select images, text or videos in whatever way comes naturally to you — like circling, highlighting, scribbling or tapping — and find the information you need right where you are.

When something grabs your interest (like these adorable dog goggles!), it can be disruptive to stop what you’re doing and use another app or browser to start searching for information.

But now, whether you’re texting friends, browsing social media or watching a video, you can search what’s on your screen right when your curiosity strikes.

Circle to Search is launching globally on select premium Android smartphones on January 31, starting with the Pixel 8, the Pixel 8 Pro and the new Galaxy S24 Series.

And as we’ve shared, Search and Shopping ads will continue to appear in dedicated ad slots throughout the results page.

Point your camera, ask a question, get help from AI 

In 2022, we pioneered multisearch in Lens as a new way to search multimodally, with both images and text. Since it launched, multisearch has been best for refining visual queries — like searching for a photo of red sneakers with Lens and adding the word “blue” to find them in your preferred colour.

But now, thanks to our recent breakthroughs in generative AI, multisearch makes exploring the world easier than ever before.

Starting today, when you point your camera (or upload a photo or screenshot) and ask a question using the Google app, the new multisearch experience will show results with AI-powered insights that go beyond just visual matches.

This gives you the ability to ask more complex or nuanced questions about what you see, and quickly find and understand key information.

For example, imagine you’re at a yard sale and you come across a strange-looking board game. There’s no box or instructions, so immediately some questions spring to mind: What is this game and how is it played? This is where the new multisearch experience can help.

Just take a picture of the game, add your question (“How do you play this?”), and you’ll get an AI-powered overview that brings together the most relevant information from across the web.

This way, you can quickly find out what the game is called and how to win. And with the AI-powered overview, it’s easy to dig deeper with supporting links and get all the details.

AI-powered overviews on multisearch results are launching this week in English in the U.S. for everyone — no enrollment in Search Labs required.

To get started, just look for the Lens camera icon in the Google app for Android or iOS. If you’re outside the U.S. and opted into SGE, you can preview this new experience in the Google app.

You’ll also be able to access AI-powered overviews on multisearch results within Circle to Search.

Continuing to boldly experiment with generative AI in Search 

This week’s launch of AI-powered insights for multisearch is the result of testing we began last year to see how gen AI can make Search radically more helpful, with our Search Generative Experience (SGE) in Search Labs. We’ve gotten lots of useful feedback from people who’ve

chosen to join this experiment, and we’ll continue to offer SGE in Labs as a testbed for bold new ideas.

But our goal is to make AI helpful for everyone, not just early adopters. So moving forward, as we continue to experiment and uncover which applications of gen AI are most helpful, we’ll introduce them into Search more broadly, like we’re doing now with multisearch results.

Today’s updates will make Search even more natural and intuitive, but we’ve only just scratched the surface of what’s possible.

To try out the latest capabilities we’re testing, enroll in Search Labs (where available) and opt into the SGE experiment. We hope you’ll join Labs as we continue reimagining the future of Search.

The post New Ways to Search in 2024 | by Elizabeth Reid appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

When Google first launched 25 years ago, it was far from the first search engine. But quickly, Google Search became known for our ability to help connect people to the exact information they were looking for, faster than they ever thought possible.

Over the years, we’ve continued to innovate and make Google Search better every day. From creating entirely new ways to search, to helping millions of businesses connect with customers through search listings and ads (starting with a local lobster business advertising via AdWords in 2001), to having some fun with Doodles and easter eggs — it’s been quite a journey.

For our 25th birthday, we’re looking back at some of the milestones that made Google more helpful in the moments that matter, and played a big role in where Google is today. Learn more about our history in our Search Through Time site.

2001: Google Images

When Jennifer Lopez attended the 2000 Grammy Awards, her daring Versace dress became an instant fashion legend — and the most popular query on Google at the time. Back then, search results were just a list of blue links, so people couldn’t easily find the picture they were looking for. This inspired us to create Google Images.

2001: “Did you mean?”

“Did you mean,” with suggested spelling corrections, was one of our first applications of machine learning. Previously, if your search had a misspelling (like “floorescent”), we’d help you find other pages that had the same misspelling, which aren’t usually the best pages on the topic. Over the years we’ve developed new AI-powered techniques to ensure that even if your finger slips on the keyboard, you can find what you need.

2002: Google News

During the tragic events of September 11, 2001, people struggled to find timely information in Search. To meet the need for real-time news, we launched Google News the following year with links to a diverse set of sources for any given story.

2003: Easter eggs

Googlers have developed many clever Easter eggs hidden in Search over the years. In 2003, one of our first Easter eggs gave the answer to life, the universe and everything, and since then millions of people have turned their pages askew, done a barrel roll, enjoyed a funny recursive loop and celebrated moments in pop culture.

2004: Autocomplete

Wouldn’t it be nice to type as quickly as you think? Cue Autocomplete: a feature first launched as “Google Suggest” that automatically predicts queries in the search bar as you start typing. Today, on average, Autocomplete reduces typing by 25% and saves an estimated over 200 years of typing time per day.

2004: Local information

People used to rely on traditional phone books for business information. The web paved the way for local discovery, like “pizza in Chicago” or “haircut 75001.” In 2004, Google Local added relevant information to business listings like maps, directions and reviews.

In 2011, we added click to call on mobile, making it easy to get in touch with businesses while you’re on the go. On average, local results in Search drive more than 6.5 billion connections for businesses every month, including phone calls, directions, ordering food and making reservations. 

2006: Google Translate

Google researchers started developing machine translation technology in 2002 to tackle language barriers online. Four years later, we launched Google Translate with text translations between Arabic and English. Today, Google Translate supports more than 100 languages, with 24 added last year.

2006: Google Trends

Google Trends was built to help us understand trends on Search with aggregated data (and create our annual Year in Search). Today, Google Trends is the world’s largest free dataset of its kind, enabling journalists, researchers, scholars and brands to learn how searches change over time. 

2007: Universal Search

Helpful search results should include relevant information across formats, like links, images, videos, and local results. So we redesigned our systems to search all of the content types at once, decide when and where results should blend in, and deliver results in a clear and intuitive way. The result, Universal Search, was our most radical change to Search at the time. 

2008: Google Mobile App

With the arrival of Apple’s App Store, we launched our first Google Mobile App on iPhone. Features like Autocomplete and “My Location” made search easier with fewer key presses, and were especially helpful on smaller screens. Today, there’s so much you can do with the Google app — available on both Android and iOS — from getting help with your math homework with Lens to accessing visual translation tools in just a tap.

2008: Voice Search

In 2008, we introduced the ability to search by voice on the Google Mobile App, expanding to desktop in 2011. With Voice Search, people can search by voice with the touch of a button. Today, search by voice is particularly popular in India, where the percentage of Indians doing daily voice queries is nearly twice the global average.

2009: Emergency Hotlines

Following a suggestion from a mother who had a hard time finding poison control information after her daughter swallowed something potentially dangerous, we created a box for the poison control hotline at the top of the search results page. Since this launch, we’ve elevated emergency hotlines for critical moments in need like suicide prevention.

2011: Search by Image

Sometimes, what you’re searching for can be hard to describe with words. So we launched Search by Image so you can upload any picture or image URL, find out what it is and where else that image is on the web. This update paved the way for Lens later on.

2012: Knowledge Graph

We introduced the Knowledge Graph, a vast collection of people, places and things in the world and how they’re related to one another, to make it easier to get quick answers. Knowledge Panels, the first feature powered by the Knowledge Graph, give you a quick snapshot of information about topics like celebrities, cities and sports teams.

2015: Popular Times: We launched the Popular Times feature in Search and Maps to help people see the busiest times of the day when they search for places like restaurants, stores, and museums. 

2016: Discover

By launching a personalized feed (now called Discover) we helped people explore content tailored to their interests right in the Google app, without having to search.

2017: Lens

Google Lens turns your camera into a search query by looking at objects in a picture, comparing them to other images, and ranking those other images based on their similarity and relevance to the original picture. Now, you can search what you see in the Google app. Today, Lens sees more than 12 billion visual searches per month.

2018: Flood forecasting

To help people better prepare for impending floods, we created forecasting models that predict when and where devastating floods will occur with AI. We started these efforts in India and today, we’ve expanded flood warnings to 80 countries.

2019: BERT

A big part of what makes Search helpful is our ability to understand language. In 2018, we introduced and open-sourced a neural network-based technique to train our language understanding models: BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers). BERT makes Search more helpful by better understanding language, meaning it considers the full context of a word. After rigorous testing in 2019, we applied BERT to more than 70 languages.  Learn more about how BERT works to understand your searches.

2020: Shopping Graph

Online shopping became a whole lot easier and more comprehensive when we made it free for any retailer or brand to show their products on Google. We also introduced Shopping Graph, an AI-powered dataset of constantly-updating products, sellers, brands, reviews and local inventory that today consists of 35 billion product listings.

2020: Hum to Search

We launched Hum to Search in the Google app, so you’ll no longer be frustrated when you can’t remember the tune that’s stuck in your head. The machine learning feature identifies potential song matches after you hum, whistle or sing a melody. You can then explore information on the song and artist.

2021: About this result

To help people make more informed decisions about which results will be most useful and reliable for them, we added “About this result” next to most search results. It explains why a result is being shown to you and gives more context about the content and its source, based on best practices from information literacy experts. ‘About this’ result is now available in all languages where Search is available.  

2022: Multisearch

To help you uncover the information you’re looking for — no matter how tricky — we created an entirely new way to search with text and images simultaneously through Multisearch. Now you can snap a photo of your dining set and add the query “coffee table” to find a matching table. First launched in the U.S., Multisearch is now available globally on mobile, in all languages and countries where Lens is available.

2023: Search Labs & Search Generative Experience (SGE)

Every year in Search, we do hundreds of thousands of experiments to figure out how to make Google more helpful for you. With Search Labs, you can test early-stage experiments and share feedback directly with the teams working on them. The first experiment, SGE, brings the power of generative AI directly into Search. You can get the gist of a topic with AI-powered overviews, pointers to explore more and natural ways to ask follow ups. Since launching in the U.S., we’ve rapidly added new capabilities, with more to come.

As someone who’s been following the world of search engines for more than two decades, it’s amazing to reflect on where Google started — and how far we’ve come.

[A special publication of Google]

The post 25 Biggest Moments in Google Search, From Helpful Images to AI appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

Today, we want to look at how AI already powers Google’s core products that help billions of people every day.

ALSO READ: An Important Next Step on Our AI Journey | by Sundar Pichai

Here are nine ways Google uses AI, today, to make the products even more helpful, including some of the recently announced features:

1. Search

When Google was founded, most searches happened on computers in homes, computer labs or libraries. Twenty-five years later, AI is making it possible to search in new languages, with new inputs (like searching with your camera, or even humming a tune) and even multiple inputs at once.

And now thanks to multisearch, you can search with images and text at the same time with the Google app.

So next time you’re inspired by an interesting wallpaper pattern, you can just snap a photo and add text to find that pattern on a shirt.

The ability to multisearch is powered by the latest in computer vision and language understanding techniques.

2. Google Maps

The product uses AI to analyze data and provide up-to-date information about traffic conditions and delays — sometimes helping you avoid a traffic jam altogether. Now with an immersive view, Google Maps fuses together billions of Street View and aerial images to create a rich, digital model of the world – letting you truly experience a place before you ever step foot inside.

With AI, we use 2D images of a venue to generate a highly accurate, 3D representation that models the true complexity of what a place is like – so you can see if a restaurant has great lighting for a date night or an awesome outdoor seating area.

3. Translate uses AI and machine learning to break down language barriers and allow people to connect across the world.

Google is continuing to push state of the art ML-driven translation, now with 133 languages supported. And we’ve expanded the number of languages available on-device in the Translate app as well, with 33 new available to use whether you have a network connection or are traveling without one, including Basque, Corsican, Hawaiian, Hmong, Kurdish, Latin, Luxembourgish, Sundanese, Yiddish and Zulu, among others, to make helpful translations more accessible and less network-dependent.

4. AI helps your Pixel phone instantly translate between 21 languages in chat, as well as facilitate a verbal conversation between 6 different languages in Interpreter Mode. It’s also what enables Magic Eraser to remove distractions from photos.

5. People take a lot of photos but an abundance of pics makes it easy for memories to get buried. So back in 2015, we developed AI in Google Photos to help you search for photos by what’s in them. And more recently, Google have used AI in Photos to help you revisit forgotten “Memories.”

6. YouTube uses AI to automatically generate captions for videos, making them more accessible to a wider audience, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing.

7. Human beings speak like…human beings. For a long time, computers did not. The Natural Language Processing (NLP) AI technology developed for Assistant allows it to understand and respond in a way that mimics human communication — which allows it to parse the text of your question that tries to identify the meaning of your question.

So AI is what enables your phone, your Home, your TV, or your car to understand what you mean by “Hey Google, where’s the closest dog park” — and quickly get you directions.

8. Gmail

We’re all familiar with features like autocomplete and spell check, both of which are powered by AI. But if you’ve ever wondered why Gmail is less spammy than other email services — look to AI.

Google’s spam-filtering capabilities are powered by AI, and they block nearly 10 million spam emails every minute — and prevent more than 99.9% of spam, phishing attempts and malware from reaching you.

9. Google Arts & Culture’s “Woolaroo” helps 17 global language communities to preserve, expand and share their language with you.

By applying machine learning, Woolaroo can recognize objects in front of your camera and propose translations for them – promoting language learning and preservation for heritage including Mãori, Louisiana Creole and Yiddish.

The post See 9 Ways AI is Powering Google Products appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.