Google Images was launched 25 years ago. At the time it was as simple as that – type a few words and get matching images as a result. The image search feature has become much more capable in the intervening years and is now getting a major makeover to celebrate its fourth century anniversary.
Google Images is getting a new home page. You may not see anything different yet – this will start rolling out to the desktop page in US English in the coming weeks. But once it goes live, you’ll see something that looks and works like Pinterest.
New Archives feature for Google Images
The page will show you images the algorithm thinks you’ll like, even before you even type anything in the search box. This screen will automatically update with new images in real time.
And here it becomes similar to Pinterest – you can add images to collections to save ideas for travel, outfits, furniture and whatever else interests you.
Next is a useful tool when Google Images can’t find the right image you need – you can simply create one using Nano Banana 2. You can simply describe the image you want in the search box and it will be generated for you in the AI overview blurb that appears above most search results. Here is a demo:
Image creation in Search will soon be available in English in all regions that currently support image creation in AI mode.
By the way, Google’s blog post about these new features includes a fascinating history about Google Images. It started in 2001 and progressed quite slowly at first, but then things picked up pace in 2025.
We won’t go into too much detail here – click the source link if you want to read the full story. What we found interesting is the introduction of similar images in 2009. It changed the way image search worked – instead of using words to look up images, you used images to look up images.
At first, you could only use images that appeared as part of search results. But then in 2011, Google introduced search by image, which allowed you to search using an image you uploaded yourself.
This then evolved into Google Lens in 2018 – instead of uploading an image, you can simply take a photo and use it to identify objects or translate text. This in turn morphed into Circle to Search, which used whatever is on your phone’s screen to initiate a search. Circle to Search is now on 580 million Android devices. Quite a journey for something that started as a simple image search, huh?