Comparisons

Google does not rest on its laurels. Change and improvement are always in the air as those clever Google boffins fiddle around with possible innovations.

All of us are familiar with the incredible search facility that Google has blessed us with. They have placed nearly all human knowledge at our fingertips. Everything is just a click away.

But did you know that you can search images? By this, I mean that you let your cursor hover over a particular image, then using the right hand button on your mouse or laptop you will find a drop down menu with one of the choices being "Search Google for Image". Click on this and you will soon find other locations where this image has been used - if any - and also a small mosaic of "Visually Similar Images".

Yesterday, I posted a striking image by the street artist Phlegm - it was a detail from his mural on Snuff Mill Lane. Hovering over the image and following the process described above, Google provided me with these "visually similar images", all black and white street art:-

The legendary Welsh blogger John Archibald Gray (or JAG for short) has several pictures in his sidebar. This is one of them:-

 And here's one of the "visually similar images" that Google quickly called up:-

Here's Ms Lee George's profile picture from "Kitchen Connection":-

 And here's a bunch of what Google consider to be "visually similar images":-

Finally here's the superb parrot header logo from the brilliant "Shooting Parrots" blog by the equally brilliant and exceedingly handsome Ian Rhodes from Greater Manchester:-

 Following the same process, Google quickly takes us to this visually similar image:-

Not only is this "search image" facility useful in numerous ways, it can also be fun as you see the kind of imagery that Google's wheels come up with in visual comparison. Lord knows how they do this so rapidly. To me it's rather magical.