Google Lens via Chrome’s Side Panel will soon support third-party search engines

Chrome’s “Side Search” allows you to pop open a panel and search Google for anything you right-click without having to leave the page you’re on. It’s both efficient and strange since we’re generally accustomed to just opening a new tab to get back to Google. However, the feature was first introduced in Chrome for Android, and it’s quickly become something I use each week.

For those who don’t prefer to use Google for search queries, you’re in luck, because Twitter user Leopeva64 has just discovered that pretty soon, the company will actually allow you to swap this out with another third-party search engine of your choice!

…In preparation for third party search engine support in the Lens side…

Chromium Gerrit

To be clear, this isn’t being developed for standard highlight and right-click searches, but instead for Lens image searches. One quick note, however – if your default search engine is, in fact, set to something other than Google, your Lens or region (drag to select) search will pop up in a new tab instead of the Side Panel.

It may be the case that in the future this changes to show results from DuckDuckGo or Bing, etc. in said Side Panel, but for now, it’s being implemented in a limited capacity while it’s being developed. Leopeva64 says that whether or not this changes will depend solely on updates from third parties, not Google itself. Ultimately, however, the idea will be to send all traffic from all search engines to the Side Panel, which will be a welcome feature update!