Google Releases A Search App That You Can Tweet From, But Can't Search Twitter From

picture-92A hot area of development right now is in the field of desktop Twitter clients. Some like Tweetie, are Twitter-only, while others like Seesmic Desktop, handle a few different services with a focus on Twitter. The area is apparently so hot that Google is now even getting involved.

While technically, its Google Quick Search Box (QSB) is a Mac desktop application meant to make searching the web and your desktop a breeze, you’ll notice that it comes with exactly one additional account type (beyond Google) built in: Twitter. Yes, aside from typing queries into the QSB and getting results, you can also use it as a Twitter status updater.

Google isn’t the first of the big boys to get involved with Twitter on the desktop side of things, Yahoo recently launched Sideline, which is a much more full-fledged client. Unfortunately, QSB doesn’t allow you to see your Twitter follower stream, it just allows you to update your status right now.

There is a Quick Search Box built-in to the Windows version of Google Desktop as well, but to the best of my knowledge, it doesn’t promote this Twitter functionality in the same way, if it offers it at all.

Actually tweeting from QSB it is a bit tricky at first, so I’ll copy Google’s directions below:

  1. The secret of creating a “text” item: Text items are queries that start with a space (e.g. hit the space bar and then start typing). To tweet, activate the QSB, hit the space bar (creating a text item), and type in the text you want to tweet – remember Twitter has a 140 character limit! The selected result should be a “text” item. Hit the tab key to show the available actions on the item. Select the “Send Twitter Status” action for the account you wish to tweet with and hit the return key.
  2. Pivoting on the search result: If the text item thing confuses you, just pull up the QSB, type your query, and pivot (hit tab) on the search result. Select the “Send Twitter Status” action for the account you wish to tweet with and hit the return key.

It’s a pretty quick way to tweet something, actually. And it does a very nice job for searches as well, obviously. But one thing it doesn’t do that would make perfect sense, is search Twitter. Come on Google, get on that. What I want to know is, does anyone still really believe that Google has no interest in Twitter?

As many commenters are noting, this can basically replace Quicksilver for the Mac, and shares one of the same developers.

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