Ah, the animated GIF. The Internet trend that will never ever die. These ever-looping photos are all over sites like Tumblr and Reddit, where they are used to tell short stories and, more often than not, used to demonstrate reactions. If you've ever been in dire need of the perfect GIF to react to a friend's Facebook post, for example, there haven't been many good options... until now.
Google announced in a post on Google+ on Tuesday that it has added a feature to its image search tool that will allow users to search for animated GIFs. Just search for whatever type of GIF you like in Google Images, click "Search tools," and choose "Animated" under "Any type."
This isn't the most earth-scattering develop to hit Google Image Search. In fact, you were previously able to search for "Graphics Interchange Format" files, or GIFs, on Google, but never could you filter out still-image GIFs from their better-known, animated cousins.
The tweak to Google's search tool is just more evidence of the rise of the GIF in 2012 (Oxford American Dictionaries' "Word of the Year") and going into this year. During the 2012 Olympics and then the U.S. presidential election, GIFs emerged as a viable storytelling tool for online journalists. Not bad for a 26-year-old image file format, ancient by Internet standards.
It seems the filter is being rolled out gradually to users, so you may not have access to it yet (we don't).
Are you over the whole GIF phenomenon? Well...
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