Is Google building the next Pinterest?
Google Images provides a glimpse that Google is working on something BIG to take-over Pinterest — the world’s largest catalogue of ideas.
On a bored weekend, I was browsing my Pinterest for some inspiration from one of my favourite artist Joan Mirò and pinning some of the painting pictures to my Paintings Board. I wanted to cross-check the data provided in the WikiArt site.
So, I went to Google and looked up for the painting. Then, I was curious to search some similar images in Google Images. Joan Mirò never failed to give me surprises by his very disturbing portrayals of humans.
While eagerly looking at the images, I didn’t fail to notice a strange pair of buttons there while viewing a detailed view of an image. The buttons are named Save & View saved. I was curious and clicked the Save.
Boom!!! The particular item I was viewing was saved (somewhere in the Internet)
What are you hiding Google?
Then I got interested in it and dig up a bit. There was an announcement in Google’s Search blog as “Easily get back to the images you’ve found on Google” — But, in my POV totally to misdirect us. If you forget, Google’s vision is (to generate profits) and also —
To organize all of the data in the world and make it accessible for everyone in a useful way.
In all senses, Pinterest is a real threat to Google’s one of the very popular product Google Images and in a way to the whole Google Search environment itself.
Why?
Gone are the days, we used to search things just for seeking information. Now, with smart phones & ultra fast internet connections, we want to know everything in a nutshell — if visually, that would be awesome! That’s what Pinterest is trying to achieve. They want to be
The World’s Catalogue of Ideas!
But, as one of the most popular image search engine since the inception of the internet, Google didn’t want to lose the spot. But, somehow it lost that spot to Pinterest very badly for some years now.
Artists, Designers, Chefs, Procrastinators and many more professionals & hobbyists are engaged in Pinterest for digging up their interests. They go to Pinterest, they find a large community of like-minded people, they find interesting stuff pinned for them already by the community, they find visually & contextually similar stuff featured for them to inspire more, they find their boards are pinned by other people, they go there & they feel they belong there.
But, think of a scenario where you’re searching for an interesting idea in Google images, and want to get in touch with that idea forever. Sadly, you’ve no option other than saving the image in offline. Though Google has the best possible related image search algorithms & the power of its in-house built deep neural networks to best match our queries — Google failed dramatically in this particular area.
So, this is a good time to build or never. I think Google started working on the foundations from last year. Also, Google started allowing users to save the Search results in Chrome now. The below screenshots are the proof that Google’s idea is BIGGER than what it says in public,
So, what’s next?
Building a community is always a headache for Google, as it failed itself in Google+ and previously with Google Buzz, Google Wave and with hundred other failed projects.
Let’s wait and watch how Google or Alphabet pulls this one up. Brace yourself for a future dominated by Google products.
Few media outlets covered this feature but all of them, failed to get a real sauce of it. So, giving my part here. Brand logos are copyrighted to their respective owners.
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