Explore images with Google Image Swirl

On November 17, 2009 Google launched an experimental feature in Labs called Google Image Swirl, which builds on new computer vision research to cluster similar images into representative groups in a fun, exploratory interface.

For example, if you search on Image Swirl for [washington], you'll see 12 image thumbnails including President Washington, the Washington Monument, a map of Washington D.C. and the Capitol Building. Once you find the group of images you're interested in, you can click on the thumbnail and a cluster of images will “swirl” into view. You can then further explore additional sub-groups within any cluster.

Image Swirl expands on technologies developed for Similar Images and Picasa Face Recognition to discern how images should be grouped together and build hierarchies out of these groups. Each thumbnail on the initial results page represents an algorithmically-determined representative group of images with similar appearance and meaning. These aren't just the most relevant images — they are the most relevant groups of images.

Image Swirl currently works for more than 200,000 queries and the developers plan to include more queries in the future. Available queries will auto-complete as you start to type in the search box, similar to Google Suggest.

via the Official Google Blog

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visual seach, new google search, image swirl, google