If you want to know where Google is headed, look through Google Lens. The artificially intelligent, augmented reality feature seemed to generate the most interest at Google's developer conference. Of all announcements, it best encapsulated what Google's transition to an "AI first" company means. Google's CEO Sundar Pichai underscored the tool as a key reflection of Google's direction. "All of Google was built because we started understanding text and web pages. So the fact that computers can understand images and videos has profound implications for our core mission," he said so in his introduction of Lens. During a demo, Google showed off how you could point your camera at something and Lens would tell you what it is－like, it could identify the flower you're preparing to shoot. In another example, Pichai showed how Lens could do a common task－connecting you to a home's Wi-Fi network by snapping a photo of the sticker on the router. A third example was a photo of a business's storefront－and Google Lens could pull up the name, rating and other business listing information in a card that appeared over the photo. The technology basically turns the camera from a passive tool that's capturing the world around you to one that's allowing you to interact with what's in your camera's viewfinder. Later, during a Google Home demonstration, the company showed how Lens would be integrated into Google Assistant. Through a new button in the Assistant app, users will be able to launch Lens and insert a photo into the conversation with the Assistant, where it can process the data the photo contains. To show how this could work, Google's Scott Huffman holds his camera up to a concert marquee for a Stone Foxes show and Google Assistant pulls up info on ticket sales. "Add this to my calendar," he says－and it does. The integration of Lens into Assistant can also help with translations. Huffman demonstrates this by holding up his camera to a sign in Japanese, tapping the Lens icon and saying "What does this say?" Google Assistant then translates the text. Pichai said in his founders' letter a year ago that part of this shift to being an AI first company meant computing would be less device-centric. Lens is an example of being less device-centric, on mobile. The technology behind Lens is essentially nothing new, and that also tells us something about where Google is going. This is not to say that Google is done coming up with new technologies, but that there are a lot of capabilities the company is still putting together into useful products.