Want to quickly look up something while in an iMessage conversation? You can now “Google it” right within iMessage as internet search giant’s core feature is now available in Apple’s messaging app. Google today updated its Search app for iOS which brings an iMessage extension which enables iOS users to search the web and share those results in their conversations from within iMessage itself.
The extension appears to draw inspiration from Gboard, a third-party iOS keyboard that was developed by Google itself. The Google Search iMessage extension will let users quickly search the web and share the results in their conversations. Users just need to punch in a query in the search box or tap a button to conduct a specific type of search such as Food, Weather, Trending, Videos, Nearby, and more.
Each result that’s surfaced by this extension will have a “Share” button which when tapped will add the result directly into the conversation as a card. The recipient only has to tap on the card to get the full Google search result.
It’s good that Google has decided to offer some of the features that it introduced with Gboard through an iMessage extension since not all users want to swap out the native iOS keyboard for a third-party option.
Not to mention the fact that it also lets Google tap into another repository for users who will now send queries to its search engine from one of the most popular apps on iOS devices.