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With better search on iOS, Apple keeps beating Google at its own game
Hey Google, what about universal search on Android?
I'm a little angry. No, scratch that, I'm very angry. Whenever Apple introduces improvements to Spotlight on iPhones and iPads, I have vivid PPSSD (post-personal-search stress disorder) and remember the glorious years when we had a decent on-device search solution on Android. Then it was gone and Google, the search company to end all search companies, pretended nothing happened, that it was never there, and whoever really wanted a central search solution on their phone?
Searching for your personal information inside the Google app has been possible for a while. It first showed up as the In Apps tab back in 2016, but was later renamed to Personal and started appearing on the desktop as well, then disappeared again. But recently, Google seems to have given personal searches more prominence inside the Google app on Android by dedicating a shortcut to them in the menu and on the app icon.
Android's always been pretty good at search - it's developed by the world's biggest search company, so you'd hope so - but one thing that it's always struggled with is searching content on your device, having removed it in Ice Cream Sandwich because the API was not up to scratch. Google is attempting to fix that today with the launch of the new 'Search In Apps' feature, which Cody uncovered part of during a recent Google app teardown.