Google Search, Maps Updated With Focus on Arts and Culture

Google on Tuesday announced updates for its Search and Maps apps that will be aimed at enriching the cultural and art knowledge for users. As a part of the update, Google will start featuring new insights and more relevant results for the art-related search queries, powered by the Google Arts & Culture platform. In addition, the Internet giant has also added a Panoramic View feature that will let you know key insights about the artworks when you visit virtual tours of museums. The update is available to download right away for Google (Search) App and Google Maps.

The update to Google Search is a result of the collaboration of Google Arts & Culture team and Google Search engineers to 'improve systems understanding in recognition of artworks' for over 500 million art-related searches made. Besides, it also involves machine learning to recognise the places that you can see in person, the artists who made the artworks, the materials they used, and the art period they belong to.

If you make a search query for an artist like M.F. Hussain, Google Search will show an interactive knowledge card that will further let you to explore various options like the artist's works. Additionally, you can also scroll further to virtually visit the museums to glance at the artist's paintings on the wall, a few of which are also available in high resolution straight from Google Arts & Culture.

Coming to Google Maps, it will start showing virtual tours of some of the renowned museums like Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai or National Museum in New Delhi. You will be able to browse different lobbies and rooms inside the virtual tour of the museums where you can also clearly see the paintings and hangings along with proper annotations right next to them. As you click on the annotations, a new page will appear that will consist of more relevant information and high resolution images with zoom support.

Google says it has made use of visual recognition software to index the museums from all over the world along with over 15,000 works by various artists.