Before today, if you tried to search for a word or phrase in one of your emails stored in Google’s free Gmail service, you got a list of the most recent emails. Now, Google is adding a search feature to Gmail that makes it more like you’re searching for something on the web.
In a post On the Google Workspace bloghe declared:
When searching in Gmail, machine learning models will use the search term, recent emails and other relevant factors to show you results that best match your search query. These results will now appear in a dedicated section at the top of the list, with all results sorted by renewal.
According to the blog, this feature has apparently been highly requested by users, and it’s easy to see why. Trying to find a specific email with a specific word can take some time if the search results only come up with recent emails with that word. In theory, this new feature should make it faster for people to search and find what they need in archived emails.
The new feature is available to individual Google Accounts as well as all Google Workspace users. The rollout for the new “Smart” search features should take about 15 days to fully complete. There is no word yet on when or if this feature might be implemented on the web-based version of Gmail.
Like Microsoft, Google is trying to add more machine learning and AI-based features to its productivity apps like Gmail, Docs and others. In March, the company said it would begin outside testing of generative AI features in Gmail and Docs. Testing of these AI features was expanded to 10 times the previous number of external users in early May.
