Google held its Search On conference yesterday. The opportunity for the Californian giant to lift the veil on the novelties of its search engine.
Augmented reality was in the spotlight yesterday, with Google notably introducing innovations in this direction within Google Maps and new 3D models in Google Search.
It is well known that the first song you hear in the morning is often the one that stays in your head all day. And there is nothing more frustrating than not recognizing it. Following this idea, Google introduces a new way to search for a song: you will now have to whistle or hum a tune for 10 to 15 seconds for the search engine to identify it.
Google explains, “ When you hum a melody in Google Search, our machine learning models transform the audio stream into a cipher sequence representing the melody of the song. We have trained our models to identify songs from a variety of sources, including human vocals, whistles and hums as well as studio recordings.
New on Google Maps
We reported earlier this month that Google had continued its work on Live View allowing information to be superimposed in augmented reality during a route. Now Google announces that it is possible to activate this feature and obtain information on nearby stores, such as opening hours or their level of attendance.
In fact, in the context of the pandemic, Google wishes to highlight a feature introduced in 2016: the indication of the level of attendance in public places. Between March and May of this year, this feature is said to have generated 50% more interest among users. Moreover, Google announces that it has multiplied by five the number of places now indicating their level of affluence since last June.
Google Lens becomes more accessible on Android
Google Lens is based on an artificial intelligence algorithm capable of detecting elements within an image. When you make a request on Google Images, a long press on one of them will now activate Google Lens.
For example, Google shows how to find an object or an item of clothing spotted in a photo, in other photos.
On Android, Google Lens is now accessible directly from the Google application as through the Chrome browser .
More augmented reality in Google Search
Did you know that Google’s search engine has several 3D objects or animals that can be displayed in augmented reality? In place since 2019, this option has been enhanced during containment. It is therefore now possible to invite an alligator, a tiger, a lion or even…. a T-rex!
Other objects will soon be available, including cars, taking advantage of a 3D representation of the exterior but also of the interior of the passenger compartment. To do this, Google would work directly with different manufacturers.
Another optimization announced: the suggestions. When a typo has been identified within the search engine, Google most often offers a suggested query such as ” Did you mean? “ . And frankly, 1 in 10 requests would be misspelled. Also, the company has strengthened its work, explaining only that these suggestions will now be more relevant.
Source: Google
