Many Google employees get to spend 20% of their time brainstorming and executing their own personal pet projects. Engineer Adam de Boor used his time to add several new functions to Gmail’s Google search field. Many of these features were already available in the regular Google search engine, but you couldn’t use them in the limited Gmail widget.
- You can now type the word “define” before another word to get a dictionary definition right off the bat.
- When you misspell a word in your search, Google will suggest the correct spelling afterward to improve your results.
- You can type math problems and calculations into the search field and get the solutions at the top of your results. For example, searching “7 * 126″ would bring you the result “7 * 126 = 882.”
- Type in a search term and follow it up with the name of your city and you’ll get local results, as pictured in the image above.
- Enter the word “weather” and your zip code or city name and the current forecast will appear.
- Queries that match a lot of Google News stories will show up with a primary story at the top and a link to a list of related articles.
Finally — and this deserves a special note because it actually exists outside the widget — there’s now a “Search” button in the toolbar when you’re composing an e-mail. If you select text then click on that button, the widget will pop up and show you the search results. Pretty nifty.
Reviews: Gmail, Google
Tags: gmail, Google, labs, Search, software
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