Google to include people's Gmail in search results

Associated Press

(CBS/AP) Google's Internet search engine is getting more personal by highlighting information drawn from its users' Gmail accounts on its main results page.

Google adds more personal touch to search
Google launches new search with Knowledge Graph
Full coverage of Google at Tech Talk

The feature announced Wednesday marks Google's latest attempt to deliver data that people are seeking more quickly as it tries to maintain the dominance of its lucrative Internet search engine. Google is initially testing the feature with 1 million Gmail users who must sign up to participate.

Gmail's more than 425 million users already can search within their e-mail accounts to find something they need, such as an order from Amazon.com or an airline reservation.

Now, Gmail users who join the trial will be shown a list of relevant e-mails on Google's main search results page if the correspondence contains a word entered in a search request.

Google has been moving toward a more personalized, custom search when it launched a feature called "Search, plus your world" in January, and the Knowledge Graph project in May.

Search, plus your world pulls personalized search results from a person signed in to their Google accounts, featuring photos from Picasa or links from Google+. The Knowledge Graph features information that Google deems relevant to a search, such as vital information or photos related to a topic.

[RealistWithIdeals]

This doesn't violate privacy; the idea is that I can search my email and web at the same time if I am logged in, but I can't look at anyone else's and they can't see mine. Sure, you can say what if they do it wrong about anything new.

They used to have a feature (maybe still do if you don't use latest interface) in mail to search the web so that while they were separate searches you did not have to re-enter your search term, just click a different button. Now that appears to be gone from the mail page. I think this will be a good feature.

[foo8259]

I think the idea is nothing is/will be private on-line anymore -- not even e-mail. I now use duckduckgo, a no track you search engine.

[Kimbakat]

Well that's a programming disaster waiting to happen. Why not just login to your gmail account and do a search there?