25 biggest moments in Search, from helpful images to AI
2006: Google Trends
Google Trends was built to help us understand trends on Search with aggregated data (and create our annual Year in Search). Today, Google Trends is the world’s largest free dataset of its kind, enabling journalists, researchers, scholars and brands to learn how searches change over time.
2007: Universal Search
Helpful search results should include relevant information across formats, like links, images, videos and local results. So we redesigned our systems to search all of the content types at once, decide when and where results should blend in, and deliver results in a clear and intuitive way. The result, Universal Search, was our most radical change to Search at the time.
2008: Google Mobile App
With the arrival of Apple’s App Store, we launched our first Google Mobile App on iPhone. Features like Autocomplete and “My Location” made search easier with fewer key presses, and were especially helpful on smaller screens. Today, there’s so much you can do with the Google app — available on both Android and iOS — from getting help with your math homework with Lens to accessing visual translation tools in just a tap.
2008: Voice Search
In 2008, we introduced the ability to search by voice on the Google Mobile App, expanding to desktop in 2011. With Voice Search, people can search by voice with the touch of a button. Today, search by voice is particularly popular in India, where the percentage of Indians doing daily voice queries is nearly twice the global average.