Google will soon show you relevant information from your Gmail when you perform a regular old Google search. You can trial it now before it becomes official.
Your email is basically a huge repository of information where you store travel itineraries, party details, package tracking numbers, phone numbers and other important bits of data. If you join the field trial, Google will pull relevant information from your emails and display it alongside your search results. For example, if you’re researching an upcoming trip, your airline confirmation email will pop up in a right-hand pane.
With the launch of Knowledge Graph earlier this year, Google’s whole approach to search changed. Pulling Gmail into search results fits right in with the new mantra. Before, Google wanted to provide you links to information. Now it wants to scrape the sources and provide you with the information itself.
It’s further integration of your Google identity, which could be seen as further depletion of your privacy. But Google heading this direction is inevitable, so the best we can all do is maybe sit back and enjoy the benefits while doing our best to forget the creepy negatives.
The trial is limited to users with @gmail.com email addresses, and it will only be available on Google.com in English. If you sign up and you don’t like it, you can opt out of the trial. There’s no word on when — or if — a wider rollout will happen. [Google via The Next Web]