To celebrate 10 years of
Creator Weekly, I’m sharing tech highlights from 2015 that still resonate 10 years later. This update was for the week of December 5, 2015.
In December 2015,
Google added the ability to save and organize images from search.
This was a new feature on mobile devices that let you star and bookmark images in the Google Search results, and organize them into folders.
It started out only available on the mobile web in the US. A few months later it was expanded to Google Search on desktop.
Google has expanded Collections so that you not only can save images, but also
save links and places.
You can share a link to your Collection so anyone can view it, or add collaborators. It also pulls in lists created in Google Maps.
And you can access them all on your Google Account's saved interests page.
Ten years ago Google introduced a new option in Search to save images to your
account.
Save Your Found Images
This was a new feature on mobile devices that let you star and bookmark images in the Google Search results, and organize them into folders.
It started out only available on the mobile web in the US. A few months later it was expanded to Google Search on desktop.
Save Anything from Search in a Collection
My Dublin 2025 Collection, created as a list in Google Maps.
You can share a link to your Collection so anyone can view it, or add collaborators. It also pulls in lists created in Google Maps.
And you can access them all on your Google Account's saved interests page.
Back in 2020 a Collections tab was added to the Android Google app, and Search started using AI to automatically group similar pages you visited in Search into Collections (for example, related to cooking) that you could choose to save.
A few weeks ago a
brand new feature launched in the Google app.
Tap the new Images button and Google will show you new images every day, supposedly tailored to your interests. And you can, of course, save those images to your Collections.
This feels a lot like Pinterest, but instead of images curated by other users, it’s curated (in a sense) by Google.
I have mixed feelings about this. Like so many of the newer Google Search features, this separates the content from the creators of that content. You can have a collection of images, and share the collection, without having to ever visit the original source websites.
Bookmarks on Steroids? Or Pinterest Killer?
The
new custom image feed feature
in the Google app
There are lots of places on the internet where people publicly share images:
Websites, blogs, social sites like Facebook, image sharing sites like
Instagram, and community platforms like Reddit. And, of course, there's
Pinterest, which is designed for social sharing of photos and images found
around the web.
Google has the advantage that you can see images from multiple sites in one
place.
Tap the new Images button and Google will show you new images every day, supposedly tailored to your interests. And you can, of course, save those images to your Collections.
This feels a lot like Pinterest, but instead of images curated by other users, it’s curated (in a sense) by Google.
I have mixed feelings about this. Like so many of the newer Google Search features, this separates the content from the creators of that content. You can have a collection of images, and share the collection, without having to ever visit the original source websites.
With Google pushing AI generated summaries of sites, and the rise
of zero click searches, this just feels like one more thing that can help
kill original websites and blogs for lack of visitors.
Of course people bookmark and download images anyway. This makes it easier to organize the images and at least theoretically visit the source sites.
Of course people bookmark and download images anyway. This makes it easier to organize the images and at least theoretically visit the source sites.
References
Google Search Support:
Save links, images & more and
Manage your collections & saved items
View your Google Collections: www.google.com/interests/saved
Google Inside Search Blog, 30 November 2015,
Easily get back to the images you've found on Google
Google Inside Search Blog, 28 March 2016, Easily save the images you love, now on desktop
Google Inside Search Blog, 28 March 2016, Easily save the images you love, now on desktop
Google Search Blog, 24 September 2018,
Helping you along your Search journeys: Keep track of your searches
with Collections
Google Search Blog, 22 January 2020,
A fresh way to revisit your online finds in Google Search
(Collections now with AI-powered grouping by topic)
Google Keyword, 12 November 2025,
We’re introducing a new way to explore and organize images in the
Google app
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