No matter whether you use Google search inside the browser or a native app, Mountain View wants users to have a consistent experience throughout.
The company is in the process of rolling out a newly-designed sidebar on its mobile devices. Though currently limited to Android devices running Chrome, it will likely roll out to all mobile browsers that support HTML5. Adopting an icon-activated sidebar made popular in native apps like Path, Google is taking advantage of the proliferation of larger 16:9 ratio screens by displaying more content vertically.
The change also aligns aesthetically with Chrome for Mobile, which was recently released on iOS and has become the de facto standard on Android 4.1 devices. The new bar prominently displays Google’s various properties in fine form, including Maps, Gmail, YouTube and Drive. Of course your Google+ notifications are present when the bar is open or closed, which is another reason why Google needed to clear space for this new bar.
Do you tend to use Google search within a browser, or do you stick to Spotlight/Widget, depending on your OS?
Source: Android Community
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