I can’t stop drooling over Gmail Labs. It’s simply a great idea for expanding a product, without forcing all users happy with the current one to upgrade to features they don’t want. And tonight may be the best Gmail Labs feature yet: Google Search In Gmail.
Yes, it may sound lame or obvious, but it’s a pretty kickass feature. Once enabled, it puts a Google Search widget in the left side toolbar of Gmail. From there, you simply input a query into the search box, and it will pop up the results in an overlay window at the bottom — the same type of window it users for IMs and Tasks. It will show you the top three results in this box automatically, or you can click “more” to expand the box. You can also pop the results out into their own window.
Yes, you’ve been able to search Google from within Gmail for a long time, but when you do so using the main search bar in Gmail, it opens another whole browser window for the results. That’s cumbersome. This keeps me right in Gmail and allows me to save multiple queries that I may need again later. And there’s another nice feature. Hovering over any of the results gives you a drop down menu that permits you to send the results to other people via email or IM.
It’s seriously getting to the point where I can almost do everything I want to do on the web within Gmail thanks to these Labs widgets. Don’t think Google doesn’t realize that either as it continues to becoming more of a social player on the web.
thanks to share this information with us
wont be long we will have one big open social rotisserie homepage. will mark the end of stand alone search engine destinations as we know them today.
OneLocator.com – social isolation
SpamLocator.com – locate bullshite spammer BOT.
You know how we all talk about Google wanting to become a social network?
Couldn’t Gmail be an excellent attempt at that?
Idk about you but I keep gmail open at all times and find it to be more important to me than Facebook or Twitter.
And with all these features their enabling in Labs signs point to it (least in my humble opinion).
obviously…that’s an old idea and gmail is slowly moving in that direction. your email list is ur true social graph.
While it is an old idea no one has taken a serious approach to do so, Gmail is the closest I have seen (wasn’t Yahoo! the original driving force of the idea?)
As for email being your true social graph I beg to differ. In some cases yes, but I think Facebook is a more accurate representation since people tend to add more of their real friends. While this is not true in both cases either way I think Facebook has the “purest” social graphs over all.
Is gmail still offering 1GB of storage? No recession. Keep buying stocks http://iamned.com/blog/
Thanks MG, very informative. You are a prolific writer indeed. Keep up the good work. TechCrunch is a much better place with you in the fold.
Hasn’t Xoopit been doing this for a few months already?
word. especially now that we got a google profile
this is great. while im video chatting i can send links. while im readin my email i can get results.
i cant tell u how many times ive opened up my email to send a url to the fam and then have to get another tab 4 google.
thx labs!
Next is google reader in Gmail, gmail is becoming the grand central of google. I’m looking forward to google voice as well, integrated in Gmail
Me too, now that contacts are shared between gmail and voice, why should I open a new tab and visit voice contacts, just to be able to call someone? I think this will happen very soon. Or may be, someone will come up with a greesemonkey script.
Very nice! I use ubiquity in Firefox for the same purpose, but the little embedded pop up window is even better. Little things like this make a big difference in productivity for adhd’rs like myself.
Very cool. I also keep GMail up almost all the time. It is my desktop background, so to speak. I love that.
Wow. Didn’t microsoft do this like 6 years ago?
Haha yeah, sounds a lot like Hotmail’s “Quick Add” feature to me
Gmail Labs was probably the best decision Google Made. I really hope they expand it to other products.
I’m still waiting for Google to integrate into gmail half the things I can do with Xobni in Outlook. I loved having all social media profiles of email senders at my finger tips (especially LinkedIn).
That said Xobni alone isn’t enough for me to every go back to the dreaded Outlook again…
A search box in email. Really?
Is this the kind of “ground breaking” technology writing that we’ve stooped to?
Getting a post on TechCrunch used to be the Holy Grail for any Internet company. Now it covers Google for the equivalent of putting out a new park bench.
Standards. Sigh.
How bout being able to search right within my gmail chat window and have it share the top 3 results with the person Im chatting with?
I need bigger screen for all this stuff. They all tend to go under
I really like Google Labs. Send & Archive is my favorite cause I tend to clean up inbox as much I can.
But they should really start organizing all those tools. Instead of having a random list of things they could create some kind of groups to help people find things. Notifier for new ones would be also great.
…and chocolate pancakes delivered on house after each installation
When I think about it, this will have serious impact on search deals with browsers like they have with Firefox. They will lose big chunks. Is Mozilla getting paid per impression / clicks or they have fixed contract?
This reminds me of what KwiClick has been doing for a few months now. It’s a firefox addon that gives you this type of search tool on any page, not just gmail.
https://addons....efox/addon/5655
Cool for the advanced user.
As for email being your true social graph I beg to differ. In some cases yes, but I think Facebook is a more accurate representation since people tend to add more of their real friends. While this is not true in both cases either way I think Facebook has the “purest” social graphs over all.
I really hope they expand it to other products.