Google is adding a new feature to its mobile app that could potentially challenge Pinterest to become users’ first stop for inspirational images: a dedicated images tab. The company was announced On Wednesday, it’s introducing a new “Images” icon at the bottom of the Google Search app for iOS and Android devices that will display images personalized to a user’s interests.
The images will be updated daily, Google says, noting that the feature will give users a way to organize their creative ideas or find visual inspiration for things like planning a trip, throwing a party, decorating your apartment or discovering new fashion.
These use cases, of course, are also among the top reasons users turn to Pinterest and other social apps like Instagram.
Users can browse images in the new Google tab, search for other images, and save images they like to their collections.
With the addition, Google likely hopes to increase user engagement with its app, especially since AI companies are involved in its search and ads.
Most importantly, perhaps, the feature gives Google a new surface inside its popular Search app where it could serve ads. Already, the company has been identified testing an ad carousel in the image tab on mobile devices, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see ads appearing on this new tab as well.
This is not the first time that Google has announced a special feature for saving images and other bookmarks from search. The company launched a Collections feature in 2018, later adding AI features to suggest other items you could save in your collections. However, this feature wasn’t just focused on images – it also encouraged users to save websites, products and map locations.
Google says the new images tab in the Search app will roll out in the coming weeks to iOS and Android in the US. He did not provide a time frame for the global rollout of the feature.
