Google Chrome is working on a Microsoft Edge-style “Side Search” feature

The latest experiment that the Chrome team is working on is a feature called “Side Search.” Although it’s not live yet in any Chrome branch, a recently merged commit on Chromium Gerrit has shed more light on this upcoming feature.

First spotted by Chrome tipster Leopeva64, it looks like Side Search will display relevant search results inside a small side panel without having to open a new tab.

Another new feature is coming to the side panel, “Side Search”, this could be something similar to the search results that appear in Edge’s Bing side panel :https://t.co/hGhMcUFWNl pic.twitter.com/SnrnJARTvZ

— Leopeva64 (@Leopeva64) September 22, 2021

Chrome already has a side panel that shows bookmarks and “Reading list” so it’s only natural to assume that Side Search will be embedded inside this panel. However, Leovpeva64 believes that this feature will not use the current side panel located on the right. Instead, Google may implement a dedicated panel on the left side for this feature.

Some of the code changes in the patch suggest that this new feature would not use the current right side panel, *apparently it will use a panel located on the left side of the window (Google has been testing that panel *internally for some time).

— Leopeva64 (@Leopeva64) September 22, 2021

Separately, Chrome Story spotted three related flags in the Chromium Gerrit. However, they aren’t live in the Chrome Canary branch yet.

• Side search: Enables an easily accessible way to access your most recent Google search results page embedded in a browser-side panel.
• Side search clear cache when close: Clears the side search cache when the side panel is closed.
• Side search state per tab: Enables a per-tab toggled state for the side search side panel.

Chrome’s Side Search feature sounds a lot like Microsoft Edge’s sidebar search, which lets users highlight a word or phrase on a webpage and display relevant search results in a side panel.

Besides this feature, Google Chrome is also working on a new shopping feature that will automatically fetch discount coupons for you.

Featured image: Side search results in Microsoft Edge

The post Google Chrome is working on a Microsoft Edge-style “Side Search” feature appeared first on xda-developers.

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