While most of Google’s announcements lately have revolved around AI, there are still plenty of employees working hard behind the scenes on all of the company’s more established products. For instance, on Thursday, Google announced three new features rolling out now for Chrome that improve search suggestions for users of the world’s most popular browser.
The first improvement is coming to Chrome’s new tab page. If you are logged into your Google account in Chrome and open a new tab on desktop, you will now see a list of suggestions in the Google Search box related to your previous searches. Google says it bases the suggestions on similar searches from other users, so if you recently searched for “Los Angeles Dodgers,” you’ll probably see suggestions for other baseball teams and players.
Chrome will also show users more images for search suggestions in the address bar for broader shopping categories and products based on more straightforward searches. Previously, Chrome would only display images that were a precise match for a specific product, like “Mazda CX-5,” but now it should also show images if you just search for “SUV.”
Finally, Google is boosting Chrome’s on-device capabilities on iOS and Android so that you will still see helpful search suggestions even when you have a poor network connection. This could be a massive help for campers out in the wilderness with a single bar of service. Google says it will also lead to better search suggestions while searching in Incognito Mode.
While Google Search might not be nearly as helpful as it once was, these are the kinds of clever additions that keep Chrome ahead of the pack in a competitive internet browser market. Now if only the AI features in Chrome were half as useful as these.
