Google Lens can be an incredibly useful tool that might as well have been science fiction just a few years ago, but it looks like Google is having trouble maintaining a brand for its image analysis service. A new icon appeared on one of our informant’s Google search bars that looks more like a camera than the previous version, suggesting that many people may find the old icon difficult to understand.
So far, we haven’t been able to locate the new Lens icon anywhere else – the Play Store list for the shortcut app is still showing the current May 2019 design, as well as 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 not yet clear whether Google will do well with the new design. The company may be just testing whether people are more likely to use Lens when its icon is more like a camera.
Left: Older variant. Right: May 2019 redesign.
As Google redesigned the Lens icon only during Google I / O 2019, the new variant was a surprise – after all, the 2019 icon already fits perfectly into the color scheme of the icon that Google is slowly introducing into all of its applications. But it is quite possible that many people will find the 2019 icon difficult to understand, as it looks vaguely like a camera, so a redesign that comes closer to the real may not be the worst idea.
