Google has launched two experimental products it hopes will change the way users search for pictures and news.

A feature known as Similar Images uses a picture rather than text to find other matching images.

Timeline presents information already available in Google News but organised and displayed chronologically.

Alongside these features is a new version of Google Labs, in which users can take a peek at what its thousands of engineers are working on.

Amid past criticism that Google has wasted too much time and effort on projects that have little impact, the aim of the Labs upgrade is to make prototypes available earlier.

"The idea we are trying to build here with Labs and the culture of innovation is to close the gap at the point of which a new idea is hatched and the time it takes to get into the hands of users for feedback," said Google director of product management R J Pittman.

This means engineers can find out at a much earlier stage what does and does not work in a new feature or product allowing them to either reshape it or scrap it altogether.

Google said that in the present economic climate this approach made complete sense.

"We are not especially sure where the industry is headed or the economy is headed but we do know that innovation is alive and well at Google," said Mr Pittman.

"This is a time when innovation is at its most critical in any company."

Google is the leader in search with nearly 64% of the American market compared with Yahoo, which has just over 20% and Microsoft with 8.3%

By adding new features to enrich the experience, it is undoubtedly hoping to increase its grip on the world of search.

Similar Images allows users to sort through the results of an image search more easily by clicking on a link. In a presentation to journalists, Google's director of engineering Radhika Malpani used the example of Paris to illustrate the benefits of the new feature.

While the initial search came up with the celebrity Paris Hilton, the Eiffel Tower and a photograph of an old church, clicking on any one of these images would restrict the search to one of the three. In other words the query is expressed visually as an image and not text.

"Image search is an inherently hard problem to solve because it is a visual problem and explains why people say an image is worth a thousand words because it is so difficult to describe," said Ms Malpani.

She said Google's goal was to "cover all the public images of the world and make all the images accessible to all our users".

Source: news.bbc.co.uk