Google Introduces AI-Powered Search for Chrome Browsing History

Google will let you search your Chrome browsing history by asking questions like a human

The company is also bringing Google Lens to Chrome on the desktop for the first time. You're neck deep in a research project but the finish line is in sight. You hit the close button on your browser. It vanishes and takes the dozens of tabs you had open with it. You heave a sigh of relief -- and then remember that you need to verify just one more detail from one of the web pages you had open. The problem is that you have no idea which one it was or how to get back there. You start digging through your browser's history, feverishly clicking on any pages that look familiar, but the page that you knew you looked at seems to have vanished. If this sounds familiar, a new feature coming to Google Chrome on the desktop in the next few weeks might be just what you need. With it, you'll be able to ask questions of your browsing history in natural language using Gemini, Google's family of large language models that power its AI systems. You can type a question like "What was that ice cream shop I looked at last week?" into your address bar after accessing your history and Chrome will show relevant pages from whatever you've browsed so far. "The high level is really wanting to introduce a more conversational interface to Chrome's history so people don't have to remember URLs," said Parisa Tabriz, vice president of Chrome, in a conversation with reporters ahead of the announcement. The feature will only be available to Chrome's desktop users in the US for now and will be opt-in by default. It also won't work with websites you browsed in Incognito mode. And the company says that it is aware of the implications of having Google's AI parse through your browsing history to give you an answer. Tabriz said that the company does not directly use your browsing history or tabs to train its large language models. "Anything related to browsing history is super personal, sensitive data," she said. "We want to be really thoughtful and make sure that we're thinking about privacy from the start and by design." In addition to making wading through your search history more conversational, Google is also adding two new AI-powered features to Chrome. It's finally bringing Google Lens, which is already on both Android and iPhones, to Chrome on the desktop in the US. "This means you'll be able to easily select, search and ask questions about anything you see on the web, all without leaving your current tab," according to Google's blog post about the feature. You can search with Google Lens in Chrome on the desktop by selecting its icon on the address bar and then clicking on anything on a web page that you want to search. Clicking on a picture of a plant on a web page with Google Lens, for instance, will open a sidebar directly on the web page and identify it. You can then ask follow-up questions such as "how much sunlight does this plant need to stay alive?" and get AI-generated responses inline without leaving the page you're on. Lens is also capable of parsing text within videos, which means you can hit pause and directly select any text displayed in the frame (such as a math equation) and quickly get a description in a sidebar with more AI-generated information about it. Finally, Google is adding Tab Compare, a feature that will present you with an AI-generated overview of products across multiple tabs in a single place "By bringing all the essential details -- product specs, features, price, ratings -- into one tab, you'll be able to easily compare and make an informed decision without the endless tab switching," Google says. For now, the feature is restricted to products, but Tabriz imagines a future when it might evolve to let you compare multiple schools, universities, daycares, or anything that might "make it easier for people to make decisions that are comparisons."

Google brings Gemini-powered search history and Lens to Chrome desktop | TechCrunch

Google Thursday said that it is introducing new Gemini-powered features for Chrome's desktop version, including Lens for desktop, tab compare for shopping assistance, and natural language integration for search history. Years after introducing and evolving Google Lens on mobile, the feature is finally coming to desktop. Rolling out to users across the world in the coming days, Lens will live in the address bar, as well as the three-dot menu. After clicking, you can select a part of a page and ask more questions to get search results. You can also tap on objects, such as someone's backpack in a picture, and ask questions through multi-search to find a similar item in different colors or brands. Depending on the question you ask, you might also get AI Overviews in answers. In addition to searching for shoppable items, users can also find out how much sunlight a plant needs, for example, or get help understanding a math equation. Google is also introducing a new feature called Tab Compare to aid shopping. In the coming weeks, Chrome will offer an AI-powered summary of similar items you might be searching across different tabs. For instance, if you are searching for a new Bluetooth speaker, the feature will show details such as product specs, features, price and ratings in one place, even when you're looking at these details across different pages. One of the most useful updates of this lot is the ability to search your browsing history through natural language queries. Sometimes, you don't remember what page you visited apart from a few details. The company is rolling out AI-powered history search in the coming weeks as an opt-in feature for U.S. users. An example of a natural language query is, "What was that ice cream shop I looked at last week?" Google uses a combination of URL, title, and contents of the page to show search results. The company said that it doesn't use this data to train Gemini and won't surface any information from the incognito session. Google currently can't process AI-powered search history locally, however, so it uses cloud capacity to return results.

Chrome has its own take on Window's troubled Recall feature | Digital Trends

Google has announced a number of AI features for the Chrome web browser, one of which can search through your browsing history using plain language. It's a bit like a toned-down version of Microsoft's Recall feature, which did this on the level of the entire operating system. The example given entails typing the following question into your search history: "What was that ice cream shop I looked at last week?" Chrome will then dig through and pull up sites relevant to your question. It'll then suggest a website as the "AI Best Match." Recommended Videos Like with Recall, Google clarifies that using this feature is entirely optional and can easily be turned off in settings. It also noted that it doesn't include browsing data from incognito mode. While this does, actually, seem useful, many of the same concerns that Recall faced are applicable. Google says that the feature is powered by the "latest Google AI and Gemini models," but it doesn't indicate whether Google's AI is aware of every website you visit. It also doesn't indicate if you can turn off access to certain sites, especially those with sensitive data such as medical records or banking information. Another unknown is if Google is only aware of the title of what you searched or if is it contextually conscious of things you do on the site. For example, if you asked it something like, "what was the app I was talking to my friend, Luke Larsen, on" or "what was the site I bought a laptop on," I'm curious if it would it be able to provide an answer. These caveats are important, as the lack of privacy and security is ultimately what gave Microsoft so much trouble with Recall, which still hasn't been released after it was pulled from the Copilot+ PC release. According to Google, the free update will be available in the U.S. in the coming weeks. In addition to the search history feature, Google also announced that it is bringing some new Google Lens features to the Chrome desktop app. Similar to how it works on mobile devices, you can now use the Google Lens icon in the address bar to unlock these capabilities. From there, you can select just about any object from a photo or video and ask further questions about it. You can even use multisearch to refine it further by color or other details. The obvious example might be to search for an object in an image to shop for yourself, but you could also do something like solve an equation written in a YouTube video or identify a plant in a photo. Google indicates that in some cases, you may even get an AI Overview as a response.