Google is debuting a new Image Search interface for tablets. The new image search aims to make the most of the advantages of tablets and puts more emphasis on the images themselves and less on the websites they originate from.
That may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on who you ask, users may like being able to see larger images, faster and more of them, websites are not going to like the loss in traffic too much.
"[We're] adding a new image carousel for viewing large image results within a few swipes," Nathan Beach, Product Manager at Google, wrote.
"As someone who enjoys being outdoors, I like exploring beautiful images of nature. With the new image carousel, I can discover photos of bright sea anemones or colorful lorikeet birds on my tablet in a more interactive and immersive way. Now when I tap on an image result, it’ll expand in the carousel view and I can swipe through the search results," he explained.
The new carousel view is now enabled for all iOS and Android tablets, just visit Google Search or Google Image Search directly to see it in action.
The new UI was spotted in action earlier. The main new feature is the carousel view. Borrowing a cue from Yahoo and other image search engines out there, Google now groups image search results in a slideshow.
Clicking on one of the thumbnail will open the image in a full screen view, but leaves the other images in the results accessible. This makes it easier to view more images and flick between them, something that seems right at home on a tablet.
If you really like an image or want to see the source, you can go to the original page. But the way Google implemented the carousel probably means that some websites are going to lose some traffic. The experience for users, overall, should be better though.
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