Looking back, what makes this so fascinating is that one of my favorite hobbies today is revisiting my childhood memories.
It wouldn’t have been easy for me had things around me not changed drastically since my childhood.
Technology often reminds me of that. The activities that once involved pen and paper, handwritten notes, and printed maps, are now handled by apps. This is why I find specific Google apps so fascinating.
Those apps were never designed to trigger nostalgia, but they accidentally recreated parts of my childhood by bringing my old routines into today’s world.
Here are the Google apps that recreated those moments — and how they did it.
I’ve used Google Photos since day one, and I’m finally reaching a breaking point
My photo library is too large to manage, with over 1,000 images uploaded this year
Google Maps brought back my childhood urge to explore
Google Maps feels surprisingly nostalgic when I use it to explore places. It reminds me of my childhood days when I used to wonder what existed beyond the roads I knew.
I used to imagine distant places and explore my surroundings whenever I got the chance. Not only that, but I also wondered how my surroundings looked five years before I was born.
All of this is possible through Google Maps. You can go back in time and view older street views in Google Maps, allowing you to see how roads, cities, and your neighborhoods have changed over time.
When I moved to a new place a year ago, I explored my nearby playgrounds, libraries, community centers, temples, and churches by zooming in on Google Maps.
I also used the Explore tab to find nearby places to eat, movie theaters, parks, and more. A simple query like “restaurants near me” in the search box can also give you a list of all restaurants near you where you can eat.
Overall, you have plenty of options to explore unfamiliar places right on your phone using Google Maps, something I didn’t have when I was a kid. The scale of the difference between the two timelines makes the nostalgia trip even more interesting.
Google Earth recreated the excitement of spinning the globe in my classroom
I wasn’t great at Geography when I was in school, but I found the globe in our classroom really fascinating. I could see places far from where I lived and gain crucial information about mountains, rivers, forests, and more.
I did poorly in Geography because I had to mug up these pieces of information. It never worked for me, but things would have been different had Google Earth existed back in the day.
I use Google Earth quite a lot, especially on weekends, and keep going back to my school days, wondering what if I had access to Google Maps then.
Google Earth can offer more insights into places across the world than a globe in the classroom. I can type “mountains in India” in the Google Earth search box, and the app lists all of them.
The real magic starts when you switch to the 3D view after choosing the mountain you want to explore in Google Earth. It not only shows you the mountains but also takes you there.
You can also read about those mountains inside Google Earth. It also provides the Wikipedia link if you want to learn more about them.
Google Arts & Culture brought back my childhood imagination
I visited several museums on school excursions and absolutely loved the experience each time I went there with my friends and teachers. I have plenty of memories from those moments.
I regret not visiting any new museums after I completed my school education, but I haven’t stopped learning about them. I use the Google Arts & Culture app for this.
With Google Arts & Culture, learning doesn’t feel like a task. I can learn about a museum only because I find it interesting and not because I’m compelled to learn about it.
This makes learning on Google Arts & Culture fun and interesting. You can also use the app to learn about art, culture, history, and institutions around the world.
The art selfie feature is my favorite one in Google Arts & Culture, as it captures my selfie and finds my lookalikes. That’s neat.
As a kid, I used to imagine myself as different characters, like kings, astronauts, cricketers, detectives, and adventurers. The Art Selfie feature recreates those days and puts a smile on my face.
The app has existed since 2018, but I tried it only recently. I wish I had installed it on my phone sooner.
Google Photos is my digital family photo album
Google Photos is perhaps the most natural fit for triggering nostalgia in anyone who was born before smartphones and apps became a thing.
I grew up with physical photo albums. I didn’t open them every day, but whenever I did, I spent a lot of time thinking about what each of my family members looked like when I was born.
I get the same feeling when Google Photos displays old photos and videos from years ago. The Memories feature in Google Photos feels like opening our old family photo album.
Still, Google Photos gives me a far better experience overall, as it knows when to display what. It brings old memories to your attention.
You’ll open the app to view the recent screenshots you just took, only to be greeted with some excellent moments you spent with our friends on the same day last year. That’s one major reason the Memories feature feels so personal.
I won’t say Google Photos gets it right every time, but it succeeds more than it fails.
Still, I wish I could get unlimited space to store photos in Google Photos.
Google Lens feels like having endless questions I asked as a kid
Lucas Gouveia / Android Police
Like many, I was a curious kid. I remember asking my father plenty of questions about everything I found interesting around me.
He was excellent at explaining them in a fun way, so much so that it stayed in my memories forever.
Although I rarely need to use it for identification, using Google Lens reminds me of my childhood. After the Gemini integration, Google Lens has become even better.
With Gemini Live in Google Lens, I can point my phone camera at any object and ask questions. After you get the answer from Gemini, you can also ask follow-up questions naturally.
This feels very similar to those endless conversations that I had with my father and other adults when I was a child.
Google Lens can do more than identify objects. You can use it to translate text on paper to another language, and then quickly copy and paste.
You can also use it to copy text from books directly to your phone, thanks to the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature.
Lens can also read printed text out loud and search for a specific part of an image. These are all handy features.
Google didn’t design these apps for nostalgia, and that’s the fun part
Some of these apps made it to the list of apps with 10 billion downloads on the Google Play Store, while others are far more niche.
However, none of these apps is designed to send users on nostalgia trips. They were developed for different purposes, and nostalgia comes as a side effect.
