Google’s entire business started with search, and there’s little wonder that they’re trying to make it even more accessible with things like Google Assistant, voice search and more. One place where we can often find Google search is on the home screen of most Android devices, but it isn’t especially useful — that search widget has usually been fairly slow to react, and most people tend to just fire up Chrome and search from the address bar.
Google is looking to change this, though, with faster one-click access to search. Chrome Dev includes a new 4×1 widget which adds a search bar to your desktop, but it comes with a difference: one tap, and it immediately loads a search on Chrome. This process, as you can see below, takes significantly less than a second, compared to most other Google search widgets. Your keyboard is immediately visible and ready to go.
It’s a minor change, to be sure, but it may actually help people get into search a bit more easily. While it’s in Chrome Dev for now, it will make its way to standard Chrome fairly soon we suspect.
That’s pretty cool. This is where I probably do 70% of my searches anyway.