Google described Labs as "a playground where our more adventurous users can play around with prototypes of some of our wild and crazy ideas and offer feedback directly to the engineers who developed them.

[2] Google also used an invitation-only model for users to test Labs products including Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Wave, and many of these also have their own "Labs" experimental features and previews.

[3] Although many of the experiments have been discontinued, a few have moved to the main search pages or have been integrated into other products.

In November 2021, the Google Labs brand was revived for an internal group at Google encompassing Google's AR and VR efforts, Area 120, as well as Project Starline.

[4] As of July 2024, Google Labs has introduced Search labs, an experimental AI assisted overview of the google search engine.