Google Search is about to help you sift through the web more quickly and easily. From three-dimensional augmented reality content to the news you need to read and the podcasts you need to hear, Google's going to make it more simple for you to cut right to the stuff you want.
In a set of demos at the I/O 2019 keynote, Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, and Aparna Chennapragada, product leader in Google Search, showed us the future of search, with four new tricks coming to help keep Google on top.
MORE: Google I/O 2019: All the Biggest Announcements
3D augmented reality content comes alive
Sure, you could read about a deadly Great White shark, but wouldn't you rather plop it right in the space in front of you? In the Google Image results, you'll start to see an icon that looks like a camera's crosshairs, and that identifies images that are augmented reality content.
After tapping on one of those images, you'll see a button labelled "View in your space." Tapping that option will allow you to place that object on the table in front of you, as Chennapragada did with a flexing muscle, or in the room around you, as she did with the aforementioned Great White shark.
Follow the news better
Take it from us, a massive event in the news isn't always contained inside a single story. Now, the Google News results at the top of your Search results will include a bunch of related articles that Search thinks are different enough to place side-by-side with the top option.
In the demo, Pichai showed how the improved Google Search would give us an expanded view of the black hole news that hit last month.
Camera helps you search through its Lens
Not all searching happens through the Google Search Bar, something Chennapragada demoed in a series of interactions that left us hungry. For example, if you point the new Google Lens at a restaurant menu, you'll see what the most popular items are. And at the end of the meal, you can point your phone's camera at a receipt, and Lens will help you split the bill.
Lens interacts with menus and magazines and more as well, as a demo involving a Bon Appetit recipe allowed you to see that recipe come to life, which could give you some important visual cues for cooking. Google Lens is also coming to the Google Go on Google's entry-level Android Go phones.
Podcasts are content too
Pichai revealed that Google's search results will soon bring you directly to podcasts you're looking for, treating those episodes just like the photos, articles and other bits of content you're looking for. Google will surface podcast episodes related to the search term you're looking for, helping you find podcasts you may have otherwise missed.
Check out all the news Google announced at its developer conference on our Google I/O 2019 hub page.
