Google has today announced a new option in their app called 'Recipe Search' which provides an additional range of options to refine and hone in your results.
As explained by Google:
"Now when you're searching on the Google app for a particular recipe, you'll see a carousel of tappable suggestions to make sure you catch the best recipe to suit your taste buds and kitchen skills."
Look familiar at all?
That's because it's almost exactly the same as Pinterest's 'Guided Search'.
Pinterest launched Guided Search back in 2014, and they've been refining it ever since. The development of Guided Search has lead to Pinterest now facilitating more than two billion searches every month - in fact, just this week Pinterest announced new search ads to capitalize on this rising interest.
Google clearly has some concerns about losing search traffic - which makes sense, two billion searches on another platform are two billion less its facilitating. Combine that with search activity on other platforms (Facebook sees more than 1.5 billion searches a day) and it's no surprise that Google would be looking at ways to innovate in line with audience trends.
The announcement underlines the growing relevance of social as a search and discovery tool, and an innovator in the online space. Like with Instagram copying Snapchat Stories, the platforms are starting to become more aligned, as dictated by user response - if there's a function that works and another platform can adapt it, they will.
The risk is that we lose differentiation and innovation, but the leading platforms know that they do need both of these elements to progress. It just might be that someone else comes up with them first, effectively doing the R and D work on their behalf.
Google's new 'Recipe Search' is available now in the Google app.