Last year, Google released a Gmail Labs feature that added a search box for regular Google Search within Gmail. The lab, which is called Google search, didn’t have all the features the real Google search does. They’ve taken the necessary steps to improve the feature’s capabilities in the following areas:
– Dictionary definitions
– Spelling corrections
– Calculations
– Local results
– Weather
– News
Users can now enter “define” and any word in the search box to get the definition. If something’s spelt wrong, it will ask if you meant to search for something else. Type in a math expression and get the calculation. Search for a specific place or for things near a certain place and get map results [Google said this feature will be available in a few weeks]. The more info link will take you to a place page.
You can type “weather” followed by your city and state or zip code and get local weather results not unlike what you would get in a regular Google search. If your query matches something in the news, you may get some news results.
The new features are available in all languages that Gmail supports. They have also added a search button to the toolbar when you compose a message. With this, you can select text, click the button, and it will search for that. If you don’t select text, it will just bring up a search box.