Rajan Patel, VP of Engineering at Google where he leads teams working on Lens, AR, and Consumer Shopping, told me that Google Image Search and Google Lens are coming "closer together soon." This was after I failed at using a reverse image search feature on Google Images.
The other day, when I was trying to figure out what this car was, I used Google Image Search's reverse image search feature. It came up with nothing outside that it is an antique car, which probably isn't even true. Google's Rajan Patel who works on Google Lens showed me how if I used Google Lens, Google would have told me the true answer.
After I explained that I first used Google Images to figure it out and nothing came up, Rajan Patel told me on Twitter that if I used Google Lens, I would have had the answer. But he added that "these are different products for now, but we'll be bringing them closer together soon."
So now Google Image Search, or reverse image search, are different products, but soon they will become more like one product. So reverse image search at Google will be getting a heck of a lot better.
Here are those tweets:
There's an app for that. #googlelens pic.twitter.com/ODCoSlpO3n
— Rajan Patel (@rajanpatel) May 30, 2021
These are different products for now, but we'll be bringing them closer together soon.
— Rajan Patel (@rajanpatel) May 31, 2021
Forum discussion at Twitter.