Hashtags are prevalent on many social media platforms today. With respect to Google’s own services, Google+ had support for hashtags before it was eliminated, and YouTube has had them for almost three years. Discover is Google’s latest service for experimenting with hashtags, although it seems a little unnecessary.
The implementation in Discover is somewhat similar to how YouTube shows them, with some hashtags appearing near the bottom of each card. In my opinion, these hashtags are kind of useless; the title does a much better job of telling me if I really want to read the article or click on the video.
That said, if you want to see more content about the hashtag, you can tap on it to see more relevant articles and videos. In the screenshots above, tapping the hashtag #FlatSixEngine shows you some more content that Google thinks you’re going to like, but in reality I doubt people are looking for things to read or watch.
For now, these hashtags appear to be part of a very limited A / B test. Personally, I hope they don’t become official, as they only increase the disorder.