Google releases a new major version of Chrome every few weeks, but new features usually arrive outside of those releases as server-side rollouts. Google is now rolling out three new features for Chrome, intended to improve the browser’s search capabilities.
Google has announced the release of three new features in Chrome. The new features include search suggestions based on what others are looking for, more images for suggested searches, and the ability to find search suggestions even with a poor connection.
First, the Google search box on the new tab page has a new “People also search for” section in the search suggestions as you type. It’s a short list of searches from other people after they searched something similar to you. For example, if you and some other people search “Star Trek,” and then many of those people followed it up with a search about “Spock,” you might see that suggested on the side.
In addition, Chrome on iPhone, iPad, and Android will now display multiple images in search suggestions as you type, instead of just an image for the first result. This will apparently only kick in for “broader shopping categories and products based on a simpler search.”
Finally, Chrome on iPhone, iPad, and Android can now “give you search suggestions even when you have a bad network connection.” It’s not entirely clear how this works, but presumably it’s giving you auto-complete suggestions like a virtual keyboard, instead of pinging Google’s servers for a list of suggestions every time you type a word. Google says this will also be enabled for searches in Incognito Mode.
The new features come after Google introduced a wave of AI-related functionality in the Chrome browser. This month’s Chrome 122 release added a “Help me write” feature that can turn draft text into more complete writing, and Chrome 121 added AI-powered tab group organization and new tab page themes created from text prompts.
Google says all these features should be available starting today, but you might still have to wait a few days for the server-side switch to be enabled for your devices.
Source: Google
