Soon, use Google Lens to analyse images on your Chrome browser for desktops

Google has constantly improved upon its search engine capabilities over the years, and Google Lens has been one of the best examples of that. The visual lookup tool helps users on mobile devices search for anything that they are not able to identify in real life, over the internet. It is now being hinted that this ability may not remain limited to mobile phones.

As per a user cited in a 9to5google report, Google Chrome on the desktop has been spotted featuring the Google Lens option on its Google Search. The option consists of the same camera icon that we are used to seeing on smartphones for Google Lens. On desktops, the icon can be seen placed right next to the microphone icon on the search bar meant to activate a voice search.

This is a notable hint of what Google is planning to do with its Google Lens capability. The image search technology by Google lets you search what you see, using your phone's camera or an existing photo. While the prior does not make any sense, it seems like Google will now bring the latter to desktops through Google Lens.

That is also what the report highlights. It mentions that tapping on the new camera icon on the search bar asks users if they would want to “Search any image with Google Lens.” Users can then drag and drop any image on their computer onto the search bar, or they can choose it through the in-built file browser.

The process is quite the same as we use while performing an image search through the existing Google Search. Both the features are different though. While Google's image search only tries to find similar pictures, Lens actually tries to identify things in a picture. Google Lens can spot people or subjects or texts or locations in an image. It can even copy this text from within the image and present it in an editor.

It is unclear how efficient the Google Lens will be on desktops for now. The feature seems to be in a testing phase, as the report is the only indication of its existence so far. The user found it on Chrome's Incognito Mode and revealed that any search on Lens brings out the result in a known format - image on the left, Knowledge Panels on the top-right and a grid of “Visual matches.”