Google Reportedly to Shut Down its Lens Icon from Search Homepage and Street View App Next Year

Google added one of its prominent features the Lens Icon to the search homepage a while back. The icon also became a part of its Street View App and successfully drew the attention of everyone who uses it.

Meanwhile, some reports, including 9to5Google, claimed that Google will shut down its recently added features from its homepage and Street View app in 2023. According to those reports, Google might discontinue Photo Paths, another notable icon of the Street View app the same time.

The Street View app aims to enable users to use 360-degree views of almost all streets. Users can contribute their separate 360-degree images for its database. Rajan Patel, the Vice President of Engineering at Google, told the media on Tuesday about the Google Lens icon, which has finally been a part of the Search homepage.

Users can find the Lens icon next to the mic-icon in the search box. They can click the icons to get the option of dragging and dropping to upload a picture. On the other hand, Google Lens in the Search Homepage aims to help users search, translate, and locate image source options that the company added to the latest desktop version of Chrome in the first half of 2022.

Google’s intentions to discontinue these features are likely to take place in March of next year. The company has reportedly given some notices in the latest upgraded version of the Street View app, though they are not visible to the public at the moment. According to the leaked screenshots, Google is visibly seen asking its contributors to move to Street View Studio to upgrade their 360-view videos.

For the time being, users can access Photo Sphere & Street View features from Google Maps. Smartphone users can upload 2D pictures of their chosen streets that are not already part of the app’s database. The Photo Paths features of the app can reportedly get discontinued by Google on March 31, 2023. Unfortunately, the company did not announce a replacement feature for Photo Paths on Street View Studio and Google Maps.

Google updated the Photos app with an improved Memories feature in September this year. It was another significant update that the company rolled out to the Memories section of the Photos app after the first update in 2019. It is an aesthetically redesigned feature, which has tools like the gesture of smoother vertical scroll alongside a cleaner aesthetic motion.

The revamped feature of the Photos app allows users to switch between AI-generated pictures without difficulty. Although the Google Photos app is not expecting new features to be its part soon, the icon might appear exciting to users. It lets users tap the three-dotted menu on the right side of an image and look for more photos with the same faces or people.

Google has reportedly rolled out a new feature in its Photos app for selected users in the meantime. Industry experts believe the company will soon roll out it more widely, hopefully in a few months ahead.