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Google Search For Android Now Finds Info Hidden Inside Apps (pcworld.com)

Posted by msmash on from the app-delights dept.

An anonymous reader writes: First Google created a centralized place to search the web, and now Google has a centralized spot to search your Android phone. The company just announced a new feature for the Google App called In Apps. As its name implies, In Apps lets you search for content inside your Android apps, such as a specific song, contact, or note in Google Keep. To start, the new feature will only work with a select number of apps, including Gmail, Spotify, and YouTube. Google also has plans to add Evernote, Facebook Messenger, Glide, Google Keep, LinkedIn, and Todoist in the coming months. All app searches happen on your device itself, not Google's servers, which means you don't need an Internet connection to use the feature. It's not clear how often the app will index your content or how much of a hit it will take on your battery or device performance.

40 comments

  1. Meanwhile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    James Comey can't wait for this feature to be in everybody's phone

    1. Re:Meanwhile... by unixisc · · Score: 3, Funny

      Dude can't even find stuff in Hilary's emails, what does he hope to find in anyone elses?

  2. So - an index of your content on your device.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    .. is created, then let me guess - it goes to the cloud?

    man - if i was an evil man the things you could do!

    but luckily, google doesn't do evil. right?

    1. Re: So - an index of your content on your device.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Cyanogenmod, no Google play, just F-droid. Go fuck yourselves, Google employees!

  3. iOS 3.0 Called... by macs4all · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...and it wants its Spotlight Feature back!

    Only one difference: iOS doesn't use it for (yet another) Datamining source, like with Google.

    1. Re:iOS 3.0 Called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I thought of the same thing when I read this but I wasn't going to point it out since when Google does it it's innovation, when Apple does it it's copied from somewhere else doubtlessly.

    2. Re:iOS 3.0 Called... by BradleyUffner · · Score: 1

      Only one difference: iOS doesn't use it for (yet another) Datamining source

      Can you prove that?

    3. Re:iOS 3.0 Called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All desktops called... they want their "Find"/"Search"/locate features back.

      I only have a dumb flip phone. Are you really telling me you couldn't search your phone for something before now? I didn't realize the data was so controlled by their related apps. So instead of browsing then selecting a picture to get the image viewer you had to open the image viewer then browse for the picture? No wonder I keep hearing about new "Send To " features.

    4. Re:iOS 3.0 Called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The advertising i ads system definitely doesn't connect to any of the other services, anyone can see that! Your purchase history? Nope! Your GPS location even though you have GPS off? NEVER!

      Nope, no datamining here!

    5. Re:iOS 3.0 Called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, when Apple does it, they just don't do it right. Siri works half-assed at best. Google voice, while not perfect is 100 times better than Siri. iCloud, doesn't even work half-assed, it work about 10% of the time. iMessage, do we even need to rehash all of the issues with Apple's failed attempt at creating a texting platform?

      Apple is a hardware company first, foremost and quite frankly really should only be a hardware company. The software they produce just doesn't work well. They failed years ago by not being open, creating the pretty hardware and letting competent people create software for their platform. I'm sure the reason for that really boils down to they didn't want the software people to point out all of the underlying issues with their hardware so they kept it all in house to be able to cover up as much as possible.

    6. Re: iOS 3.0 Called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Palm OS had that at least as long ago as version 3, sometime in the mid 90's, I think. All your app had to do was to respond to the API call. Nothing new here.

    7. Re: iOS 3.0 Called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bingo. This was a big Palm feature.

    8. Re:iOS 3.0 Called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Spotlight got the functionality to search within 3rd party apps in iOS 9, last year. Why be such a fanboy? You aren't going to get a special medal or a letter of thanks...

      I'm really glad this is finally becoming common in popular mobile operating systems, now if only they'd extend it to making voice commands for 3rd party apps integrated we'd have something approaching a level playing field.

    9. Re: iOS 3.0 Called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Searching though documents was available in Windows nt4 including a plugin system so any app could make its documents content searchable

    10. Re:iOS 3.0 Called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not for nothing, but BlackBerry has always had this functionality. Start typing the name of a song, person, web page you've visited, map location or whatever, and it comes up instantly. Always has.

    11. Re:iOS 3.0 Called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Newton OS (1993):
      http://www.unna.org/unna/apple/documentation/developer/ProgrammersGuideOS2.0.pdf (page 589)

    12. Re:iOS 3.0 Called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL!! You're not that naive, are you? Smarter than average, my ass.

    13. Re: iOS 3.0 Called... by macs4all · · Score: 1

      Searching though documents was available in Windows nt4 including a plugin system so any app could make its documents content searchable

      God DAMN! Next someone will point out grep, then another will point out Sherlock on MacOS, then someone will come up with something that ran on a PDP-8...

    14. Re:iOS 3.0 Called... by macs4all · · Score: 1

      Only one difference: iOS doesn't use it for (yet another) Datamining source

      Can you prove that?

      Nice try. Can't prove a negative, fucktard.

    15. Re:iOS 3.0 Called... by macs4all · · Score: 1

      The advertising i ads system definitely doesn't connect to any of the other services, anyone can see that! Your purchase history? Nope! Your GPS location even though you have GPS off? NEVER!

      Nope, no datamining here!

      If you are talking about iAd, Apple discontinued that service in July. Do try to keep up.

      As for the GPS stuff, the Gummint mandated that on ALL cellphones several years ago.

      You really are an idiot.

    16. Re:iOS 3.0 Called... by macs4all · · Score: 1

      All desktops called... they want their "Find"/"Search"/locate features back.

      I only have a dumb flip phone. Are you really telling me you couldn't search your phone for something before now? I didn't realize the data was so controlled by their related apps. So instead of browsing then selecting a picture to get the image viewer you had to open the image viewer then browse for the picture? No wonder I keep hearing about new "Send To " features.

      Hey, be mad at Google! They're the ones who are touting this as some new Revelation...

    17. Re: iOS 3.0 Called... by macs4all · · Score: 1

      Palm OS had that at least as long ago as version 3, sometime in the mid 90's, I think. All your app had to do was to respond to the API call. Nothing new here.

      So why is Google announcing this like it is?

    18. Re:iOS 3.0 Called... by macs4all · · Score: 1

      Not for nothing, but BlackBerry has always had this functionality. Start typing the name of a song, person, web page you've visited, map location or whatever, and it comes up instantly. Always has.

      But can it search content in APPS? That is what Google is crowing about.

    19. Re:iOS 3.0 Called... by macs4all · · Score: 1

      Newton OS (1993): http://www.unna.org/unna/apple... (page 589)

      Sherlock on MacOS may even predate that, though.

    20. Re: iOS 3.0 Called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where's the grep plugin for searching PDFs?

    21. Re: iOS 3.0 Called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://pdfgrep.org/
      not a plugin though

  4. That app for apps guy by slazzy · · Score: 1

    That app for apps guy will love this!

    --
    Website Just Down For Me? Find out
  5. Bring back Google Desktop by bezenek · · Score: 1

    Now if Google will bring back Google Desktop, which did this sort of deep-dive local searching for Windows (was it Linux also?) machines.

    --
    Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
    1. Re:Bring back Google Desktop by PCM2 · · Score: 1

      Windows has had its own local search indexing of that kind for ages, which is probably why Google discontinued theirs.

      --
      Breakfast served all day!
    2. Re:Bring back Google Desktop by bezenek · · Score: 1

      I didn't realize it worked as well as Google's. I compared them back when I used Google Desktop, and it was not as good (~2008). Maybe it is better now--I'll try it again.

      --
      Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
    3. Re:Bring back Google Desktop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google's wasn't really all that good and had the added "feature" of killing Windows performance with it's constant CPU intensive indexing.

  6. db by blackomegax · · Score: 1

    I searched "backdoor" in dropbox and found a note signed by condoliza rice and the NSA buried in the app!

  7. A peek over the wall by DidgetMaster · · Score: 1

    The problem is that applications want to control your data within its own 'walled garden' so that you have to go through their app to access the data. Tags and other metadata the program creates are only visible if you call their API and they decide to give you access. This application looks like something that codes to the APIs of a small number of apps to peek inside their gardens. If you are satisfied that a search will find SOME of your data, then this will work well for you.

  8. Oh Hell No by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If this data isn't getting pushed back to the mothership I'm sure it will be in a future release to improve "performance", "results", or some other reason to disguise the fact they want to mine the crap out of it. If you're not posting your photos online and allowing everything to track your exact location like a good little produc^H^H^H^H^H^Hcustomer they will helpfully index your EXIF data for you and push that up. They're not uploading your pictures, what's the problem? It really sucks that the two primary options for smart phones now are 1) Apple's : you can make any choice you want, just as long as it's the same as our choice and 2) Google's : You can make any choice you want just as long as we can track and correlate every data point including (but not limited to) your Bristol Scale. F'em all, I'm swiping my mother's StarTac.

  9. Didn't they announce this months ago? by cmiller173 · · Score: 1

    Didn't they announce this in May at the Google I/O conference? And IIRC the app has to be modified to make this available to the search app...

  10. what else is new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and now Google has a centralized spot to search your Android phone.

    it's called Google HQ

    1. Re:what else is new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google Central HQ, running on Nougat System Android.

    2. Re:what else is new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This doesn't make sense, search for a song inside an app? Do developers often hide songs in the code?