Bloomberg: “For two decades, typing a line of text into a blank search bar was the way almost everyone interacted with Google. Now the company is taking an even more active role in leading users around the internet. The search giant announced a raft of new features at an event Monday to celebrate its 20th anniversary. A Facebook-like newsfeed populated with videos and articles the company thinks an individual user would find interesting will now show up on the Google home page just below the search bar on all mobile web browsers. “It helps you come across the things you haven’t even started looking for,” Karen Corby, a product manager on Google’s search team, said in a blog post. The company also unveiled a feature to let people save searches in a collection and pick them up again later, and said it would present more information directly in search results, ostensibly helping people find what they’re looking for without having to click through to a different website. The Alphabet Inc. unit wants to expand its presence on the web and get people to spend more time directly on Google rather than on independent websites. In its drive to help people find information they’re looking for, the company is taking on tasks that were previously left to others. At the same time, politicians, activists and competitors are calling for greater scrutiny of Google’s ever-growing power over data…”

Google Blog: “…As Google marks our 20th anniversary, I wanted to share a first look at the next chapter of Search, and how we’re working to make information more accessible and useful for people everywhere. This next chapter is driven by three fundamental shifts in how we think about Search:

• The shift from answers to journeys: To help you resume tasks where you left off and learn new interests and hobbies, we’re bringing new features to Search that help you with ongoing information needs.
• The shift from queries to providing a queryless way to get to information: We can surface relevant information related to your interests, even when you don’t have a specific query in mind.
• And the shift from text to a more visual way of finding information: We’re bringing more visual content to Search and completely redesigning Google Images to help you find information more easily…”

See also CNBC: Google just rolled out a bunch of updates to its search engine. Here’s a rundown of some of the changes…