Google’s done a ton of talking about search at its Inside Search event today, and two of the most important new developments are at the desktop. It’s just announced that Android-style Voice Search is headed to Chrome (with support for English only, initially), and that it’ll be joined by a brand new Search by Image feature (also available in Chrome, or Firefox with an extension). To apply that latter feature, you only drag and drop a picture or cut and paste a picture URL within the search box, after which Google tries its best to acknowledge it and deliver relevant results — including identifying the position in an old vacation photo, as an illustration (though Google notes it is not doing face recognition). Both features can be rolling out over the following couple of days, but you will get a glimpse of them now within the demo videos after the break.
In other news, Google’s announced Instant Pages (also demoed after the break), which promises to hurry up browsing by prerendering results when its “confident you’ll click them.” It’s available inside the latest developer version of Chrome today, and also will be included within the next public beta. Lastly, Google took the wraps off numerous revisions to its mobile search offerings, including a brand new set of icons and enhanced local features when browsing on a phone, in addition to some revamped search and image results which have been specifically tailored to tablets — all of that are also rolling out today.
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