Google Maps just got a huge upgrade thanks to Gemini. Our Ask Maps feature provides conversational answers to complex questions like, "Where can I charge my phone without a long wait for coffee?" It can even book reservations while you’re on the go. Drivers are also getting a redesigned experience with Immersive Navigation, which uses real-world imagery and natural directions to help you stay focused on the road. The improvements let you better understand your route and make your drive as stress-free as possible.

While visual search used to be a one-item-at-a-time task, next-gen improvements to Circle to Search and Lens now let you identify every piece in a single image simultaneously. These breakthroughs are redefining how you can interact with the world around you — but how do they work? To better understand the visual query "fan-out" technique making it easier to search for everything you see at once, we spoke to an engineering director behind it.