Google Lens receives new icon, less than two years after last overhaul

Google Lens may be an incredibly handy tool that might just as well have been science fiction a few years ago, but it looks like Google is struggling to keep a single branding image for its web analytics service. ‘picture. A new icon appeared in one of our tipster’s Google search bar that looks more like a camera than the previous version, suggesting that many people might find the old icon difficult to understand.

So far, we haven’t been able to spot the new Lens icon anywhere else – the shortcut app’s Play Store listing still shows the current design from May 2019, as does the Google app on our phones. It looks like the new version is part of a limited a / b test for now, so it’s still not clear if Google will be successful even with the new design. The company may be testing whether people are more likely to use Lens when its icon looks more like a camera.

Left: Older variant. Right: May 2019 redesign.

Considering that Google only redesigned the lens icon during Google I / O 2019, the new variant is a bit surprising – after all, the 2019 icon already fits perfectly into the color scheme of the icons that Google is slowly introducing for all of its applications. But it’s entirely possible that a lot of people find the 2019 icon difficult to understand because it only vaguely resembles a camera, so a more realistic revamp might not be the worst idea.