A few months ago, Google announced a new field trial for a search experience that rocked my world. Basically, you could search within your emails by using the regular old Google.com, if you were logged into your account. For me, this has been awesome for finding flight information and meeting requests within my email, of which I have a lot.
Today, the company announced that the field trial would open up a little wider, as well as include items stored on your Google Drive and Calendar. Here’s what the company had to say:
We’ve gotten very positive feedback from those of you testing it out — such as this note: “The Gmail results feature is awesome! The fact that it’s all integrated into one screen is huge.” Many testers have requested being able to find Drive files as well — as one of you put it, “It would be awesome if I could search my google drive from google search as well :)”.
So starting today, you can sign up for a new and expanded field trial that makes it easier to find your stuff across Google, whether you’re searching on Google.com or searching in Gmail.
For some, this seems a bit creepy, but when you remember that Google isn’t “looking” at your email or files, and this is completely opt-in, it’s pretty cool actually. Not only is it a time-saver, but it makes complete sense, since Google is optimizing and unifying its experience over all products. I haven’t had a chance to play around with the Google Drive portion yet, but I imagine that if I’m looking for something having to do with my wedding, or weddings in general, this will play a pivotal role in me not getting yelled at for being out of sorts.
Just click here to join the trial, and let us know what you think about getting email and Drive results in your regular search experience on Google.
