Google Phone App Gets a New “Lookup” Feature and Here’s Why it’s Useless

By Mehtab Ansari • Updated On 14 Jun 2024

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Google has been making some changes to the Google Phone app for a while now. Now, Google has announced a new feature in the June Pixel Feature Drop called “Lookup.” If you haven’t received the feature yet, it will be rolled out soon as it’s a server-side rollout, not a software update rollout.

This feature will be available in the Recents tab of the Google Phone app. You can access it by tapping on a recent call from your call history and then tapping on Lookup. Doing so will perform a reverse search on Google.

The issue with this feature is that it has been available for a long time now as a hidden feature, and you could access it without the “Lookup” button in the Google Phone app. If you put it this way, it’s simply a shortcut for searching for a phone number with the country code in quotes on Google search.

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Notably, this feature only works with business numbers. That is, if you receive a call from a personal number or a landline, it won’t show any results at all. And therefore, most of the time, you won’t get any search results, making it pretty much a useless feature addition. It’s unclear why Google is adding this to the phone app.

While it’s somewhat useful for tracking business calls, it’s not much more than that. For tracing back your calls, apps like Truecaller, Airtel Spam Detection, and other services are better options.

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It should be noted that this feature is different from Profile Discovery, which ties your phone number to a profile. When you give your phone number to another Google Messenger user, it auto-populates your number and profile picture into the chat, even if you don’t have the contact saved.

It’s disappointing to see Google add seemingly useless features while removing useful ones. So, don’t get too excited—this is not a replacement for Truecaller or similar apps.

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Mehtab Ansari

Mehtab Ansari is a tech enthusiast who also has a great passion in writing. During his two years of career, he has covered news, features, and evergreen content on multiple platforms. Apart from keeping a close eye on emerging tech developments, he likes spending time at the gym.

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