The perfect image of your next big adventure, knitting project or style-changing haircut is bound to exist somewhere out there. But what happens once you find the image? Take a screenshot? Maybe try to save the webpage? Starting today there is an easier option: you can now star and bookmark images directly from Google’s image search in your mobile browser.

Let’s say you’re searching for “bob hairstyles” on Google and an image catches your eye. Simply select it and tap the star. Next time you’re at the stylist, you can easily access the picture without having to dig around or do another search.

Once you’ve starred a few images, you can keep them organized in folders: to add an image to a folder of similar items, tap the pencil shaped edit icon. Create a grouping such as “haircuts for the winter” or “snowman ideas” and your image will be added to a folder with similar ones.  

This feature is currently available in the US when you search for images on mobile, across all major browsers on both Android and iOS. To try it out, make sure you’re logged into your browser with your Google Account; then you can start image searching and planning that next adventure.

Posted by Diego Accame, Software Engineer

When Google got started, Search meant sitting at your desktop and finding the best information on websites. Today, you’re more likely to be searching on your mobile device, and the best answers may be buried in an app ... perhaps one that you don’t even have installed yet. Finding information in apps is still too hard. That’s why today, we’re sharing some new ways for you to get great content from apps — even without having to go through a download right away.
When Google got started, Search meant sitting at your desktop and finding the best information on websites. Today, you’re more likely to be searching on your mobile device, and the best answers may be buried in an app ... perhaps one that you don’t even have installed yet. Finding information in apps is still too hard. That’s why today, we’re sharing some new ways for you to get great content from apps — even without having to go through a download right away.

We started indexing the content of apps two years ago, so that when people search on Google, they can find the best results whether they’re in an app or on the web. We now have over 100 billion deep links into apps in our index — including some popular apps like Facebook, Instagram, Airbnb or Pinterest — and 40% of searches people do on Android surface app content.

But up until now, Google has only been able to show information from apps that have matching web content. Because we recognize that there’s a lot of great content that lives only in apps, starting today, we’ll be able to show some “app-first” content in Search as well. For example, if you need a hotel for your spur-of-the-moment trip to Chicago, search results will now include results from the HotelTonight app. Or if you’re thinking about visiting Arches National Park, you will now find details about the 18-mile scenic drive from the Chimani app.

In addition, you’re also going to start seeing an option to “stream” some apps you don’t have installed, right from Google Search, provided you’re on good Wifi. For example, with one tap on a “Stream” button next to the HotelTonight app result, you’ll get a streamed version of the app, so that you can quickly and easily find what you need, and even complete a booking, just as if you were in the app itself. And if you like what you see, installing it is just a click away. This uses a new cloud-based technology that we’re currently experimenting with.





We’re exploring both of these new ways to show you great “app-first” content from a small group of partners, such as HotelTonight, Chimani, Daily Horoscope, My Horoscope or New York MTA Subway Map — stay tuned for more as we expand this!

Posted by Jennifer Lin, Engineering Manager

Language feels so natural to us that we can often take it for granted—we forget the years it takes us to master it as children. It’s much, much harder for computers. We took our first steps understanding and answering questions with voice search in 2008, and the ...
Language feels so natural to us that we can often take it for granted—we forget the years it takes us to master it as children. It’s much, much harder for computers. We took our first steps understanding and answering questions with voice search in 2008, and the Knowledge Graph in 2012. Just as a child first talks about single items like “mama” or “car,” the Knowledge Graph started by providing information on individual entities like “Barack Obama” or “Shah Rukh Khan.” We graduated to answering simple questions about those entities, so you could ask “How old is Stan Lee?” or “What did Leonardo da Vinci invent?” We soon got a little smarter, so if you asked “What are the ingredients for a screwdriver?”, we understood you meant the cocktail and not the tool.

Now we’re “growing up” just a little more. The Google app is starting to truly understand the meaning of what you’re asking. We can now break down a query to understand the semantics of each piece...
...so we can get at the intent behind the entire question. That lets us traverse the Knowledge Graph much more reliably to find the right facts and compose a useful answer. And we can build on this base to answer harder questions.

Here are a few new types of complex questions Google can now handle. First, we understand superlatives—”tallest,” “largest,” etc.—and ordered items. So you can ask the Google app:
Who are the tallest Mavericks players?
What are the largest cities in Texas?
What are the largest cities in Iowa by area?
Second, have you ever wondered about a particular point in time? We now do a much better job of understanding questions with dates in them. So you can ask:
What was the population of Singapore in 1965?
What songs did Taylor Swift record in 2014?
What was the Royals roster in 2013?
And finally, we’re starting to understand some complex combinations. So Google can now respond to questions like:
What are some of Seth Gabel's father-in-law's movies?
What was the U.S. population when Bernie Sanders was born?
Who was the U.S. President when the Angels won the World Series?
We’re still growing and learning, which means we make mistakes. Ask Google “Who was Dakota Johnson's mom in the movie?”, and we’ll respond with the movies of Dakota Johnson’s real-life mother Melanie Griffith, not the actor Jennifer Ehle who played Anastasia’s mother Carla in the 50 Shades of Grey movie. (Hey, that one’s tricky even for people!)

But the next time you’re curious about something, ask the Google app, and know that we’re working hard on understanding your questions better so that we can find the answer to whatever you’re looking for.