Google Images has quietly become Pinterest, and nobody at Google seems embarrassed about it. The company rolled out a redesigned gallery that mirrors Pinterest’s visual style almost beat for beat, complete with saveable collections.
Google describes it as “a dynamic, immersive gallery of images from across the web — updated in real time and intelligently tailored to your unique interests.”
The collections feature completes the impression. Users save images into dedicated folders, which then surface as tabs above the main gallery.
As Google explained:
“As you browse and save ideas to your collections, they’ll appear as tabs above the main gallery, making it easy to jump back in and continue exploring based on what inspires you.”
Pinterest users will find that description eerily familiar as none of this is new behavior, though. Google launched Shopping Ads in 2019 copying a format Pinterest already had, then reshaped Image Search along Pinterest lines. In 2020 it built Keen, an entire standalone app mirroring Pinterest’s functions, which quietly faded away.
Pinterest now sits at 631 million monthly active users and keeps climbing as a product discovery engine. So four attempts across seven years have not dented the thing Google apparently wants gone, since visual discovery seems to reward focus rather than imitation.
The genuinely new piece is AI. Google added image generation inside Search using its Nano Banana model, letting users create a visual and then search from it. Google says this “transforms a simple text prompt into a high-quality, custom visual made completely from scratch, seamlessly bridging the gap between imagination and reality.”
That combination is the real threat to Pinterest, not the layout. Copying a grid changes nothing, yet generating the image you imagined, then searching from it, skips the discovery step entirely.
Image generation in AI Overviews arrives more broadly, reaching every region where AI Mode already supports image creation. In addition to the Google Images revamp, Google also announced an AI-powered image generation feature within Search, which will let users generate an image that they can then use as a basis for discovery.
The rollout starts with US desktop users over the coming weeks, so Pakistani users will have to wait.
