Google is adding a new feature to its mobile app that could potentially challenge Pinterest in becoming users’ first stop for inspirational imagery: a dedicated images tab. The company announced on Wednesday it is introducing a new “Images” icon at the bottom of Google’s Search app for iOS and Android devices that will display images personalized to the user’s interests.
The images will update daily, Google says, noting the feature would offer users a way to organize their creative ideas, or find visual inspiration for things like planning a trip, hosting a party, decorating your apartment, or discovering new fashion.
Those use cases, of course, are also among the top reasons why users turn to Pinterest and other social apps, like Instagram.
Users can browse the images in Google’s new tab, search for other images, and save the images they like to their collections.
With the addition, Google is likely hoping to increase user engagement with its app, especially given that AI companies are eating into its search and ads business.
More importantly, perhaps, the feature gives Google a new surface inside its popular Search app where it could run advertisements. Already, the company has been spotted testing an ads carousel within the image tab on mobile devices, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see ads appear within this new tab, as well.
This isn’t the first time Google has announced a dedicated feature for saving images and other bookmarks from search. The company launched a Collections feature back in 2018, later adding AI features to suggest other items you could save to your collections. However, this feature wasn’t solely 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 over the next few weeks on iOS and Android in the U.S. It didn’t provide a time frame for launching the feature globally.
