One of the features of the Google search engine among the most interesting from a technological point of view and at the same time also among the most useful, is that of image search, which allows you to find similar or identical images to one that we have and that we use for research In other words, you can open the image search page and without writing anything, press the camera key and upload an image file or a photo from our computer to find out if it was published on the internet by some website or if it is similar to other.
The operation is that of an optical image recognition by Google that has become increasingly precise over time.
The purpose of this type of research is not only to find similar images, but also to find out if a photo is true or if one of our photographs has been used without our permission from some website or even to try to understand what it is the object portrayed in the photo (for example the name of a monument or the artist of a painting), identify what place it is, or even to recognize a person.
READ ALSO: Tricks for Google image search
To search using an image and use the Google Search By Image service (in Italian the Search by image), you must go to the Google images site, press the button with the camera, press on Upload image and then choose the file from the computer .
Alternatively, you can also paste the URL or link of an image found on the internet, or drag an image file from the computer folder with the mouse onto the Google web page.
So if the words to describe what you would like to find are not found, then the search for images helps by inserting a file as a search query and obtaining similar images as a result.
The results page will show the image we uploaded (indicating the size and the place where it was taken) and then under the sites that use it and then the images visually similar to ours.
The technology behind Google Image search analyzes the image to recognize points, lines and textures to create a mathematical model.
The comparison of this model with all the images in the Google index results in the most similar images and the web pages where they are published.
With the search for similar images it becomes possible to find photos published on the internet concerning a place whose name you don't remember, or find photographs of a person we are looking for and trace his Facebook profile, even if you do not know his name.
In addition to obtaining relevant results based on the uploaded image, you can also find visually similar images or the same photo in different formats and resolutions .
If you use Chrome, you can install an extension that allows you to integrate the image search in the right-click menu.
Once the Search by Images (Google) extension is installed, you can then right-click on any image you see on the websites to start a search for it directly on Google.
It should be noted that Google Image Search does not make a real facial recognition anyway, but remains among the best sites for looking for people from the photo of the face or face .
However, Google is not the only site that provides this type of image recognition technology.
Already some time ago I had already listed other sites to find similar photos and similar images, looking from their own image.
Obviously, image search is also integrated into Android smartphones.
The Now Everywhere function was released in 2015 to search from any app by holding down the central button on the phone.
From 2017, then, this function has been improved and Google has made every Android smartphone capable of identifying the objects in the photos using the phone's camera, as explained in the linked article.
