Google Lens is one of the many free useful tools provided by Google. A standalone app for this service was released on the Play Store in June 2018. Now, over two and a half years later, this application has reached 500+ million installs on Android’s official app store.

For those unaware, Google Lens is an image recognition tool that was first showcased at Google I/O 2017. Later that year, the search giant integrated this service into Google Assistant on Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL.

Then, it became available in Google Photos for both Pixels and other Android devices a few months later in 2018. At around the same time, Google’s partner OEMs began to integrated Google Lens into their smartphones’ camera app.

Only after that, Google Lens debuted as a standalone app on Google Play Store. Despite being an independent app, it depends on Google app for working, just like Google Assistant and Google Podcasts.

Apart from scanning texts and translating them, Google Lens also allows users to copy the scanned text to their computer, search for a particular object, solve maths and science questions, recognize handwritten notes, and more.

That said, it is interesting to note that though Google Lens is available on all Android phones with Google Assistant, users have been downloading the standalone application from the Google Play Store since its debut. As a result, it has hit over 500 million downloads within a short period of time.

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