Google Tests App Download Shortcut in Search App



Alphabet Inc.’s Google is experimenting with letting some smartphone users download apps directly from its search app,an attempt to make using Google on mobile quicker and easier.

Google is testing the new app downloading shortcut, bypassing its Google Play app, on a small subset of people running its Android operating system, a typical approach when Google is working on new products. It is limited to the search app, and is not available on search results found at Google.com using a web browser.

“We’re always experimenting with ways to provide the best search results and making finding the content you need as easy as possible,” a Google spokeswoman said. The company declined to say how many Android users were involved in the testing, or whether or not this would become a permanent feature for the Google Search app.

Google’s experimentation comes as an increasing number of smartphone users aren’t turning to the web as the starting point for their digital lives, as many do with Google.com on desktop PCs. More and more, people are forgoing the open web and spending time directly inside of mobile apps.

Google is battling this by making significant changes to its search engine to make it more useful in this new mobile world. For instance, Google is crawling and indexing content inside apps and beginning to show that in relevant search results.

Downloading apps directly from the search app’s search results, which was first reported by the blog Android Police, would take this one step further, reducing the need to leave Google’s main service. That is, if Google can get droves of Android users to turn to the Google Search app as often as their favorite social networking or messaging app.

It’s not the first time Google has let users download apps to their phone outside of the dedicated Google Play app. Visiting Google Play through a web browser, either the mobile or desktop, lets users download apps to any Android device linked to their Google account. This can even be done on non-Android devices like an iPhone or PC.

The experiment is reminiscent of Google Now on Tap, the feature from Google’s search team built into the latest version of Android, 6.0 Marshmallow. It can trigger a suggestion of apps and actions you’ll want to launch into next based on what you’re looking at on screen. Google is essentially working on different ways to deliver search results and even predict what you might want to do, or download, to maintain its position as the backbone of your digital life.

By  NATHAN OLIVAREZ-GILES


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