Google Image Swirl was an enhancement for an image-search tool in Google Labs. It was announced on the Google labs blog on November 17, 2009 with a limited number of search queries available. It was built on Google image search by grouping together images with similar visual and semantic qualities. It was suggested that such interface and grouping could help resolve queries that can have multiple types of results, are ambiguous, such as Apple, Jaguar, etc., and explore images associated with various viewpoints. This feature is no longer available.

Bing concurrence
In September 2009, a few weeks before Google Image Swirl appeared, Microsoft announced Bing Visual Search Beta. However, exploration of images with Bing requires an installment and use of the Internet Explorer browser with Silverlight. Bing Visual Search is available only in English.

Technical details
According to Google researchers Yushi Jing and Henry Rowley, and Aparna Chennapragada, Google Image Swirl leverages both the text information and the "visual" features associated with Web images (such as those developed for Google Similar Images) to determine how images should be grouped together.

Closure
As part of an effort to refocus attention on more refined products, Google Labs was shut down in 2011. As a result, Image Swirl was discontinued.

References

External links
 Google Research Blog
 ReadWriteWeb about Google Image Swirl
 Blog entry about Google Image Swirl

Image Swirl
Image search