The double-sided brilliance of Google’s new native Windows app

Hold on a sec — what year is it, again?

In an amusingly delightful déjà vu moment, Google’s announced the launch of a new native desktop app that brings all sorts of on-demand searching prowess right onto your Windows computer — as if the PC had Google intelligence baked directly into its Microsoft-made operating system.

It’s kinda like bridging the divide between at least some of the advantages of ChromeOS and the more versatile and at times business-ready Windows environment.

It’s also almost exactly what Google tried to do with a tool called Google Desktop all the way back in the prehistoric era of 2004. But that app, like so many other potential-packed Google projects, eventually got abandoned and then axed entirely a handful of years later.

Ironically enough, at the time of Google Desktop’s death, Google said it was moving away from the concept because there had been “a huge shift from local to cloud-based storage and computing, as well as the integration of search and gadget functionality into most modern operating systems”:

People now have instant access to their data, whether online or offline. As this was the goal of Google Desktop, the product will be discontinued.

Well, here we are, over a decade later, and there’s been a huge shift again. We all still have instant access to data online and off, of course, and most of us still rely heavily on cloud-centric storage and computing. And, yes, virtually every operating system still has its own native search setup built right in, too.

So what’s changed, then, you might be wondering? Why, only almost everything around the way we search and seek out info — and, simultaneously, the way Google seeks to keep reaching us and keeping us connected to its services.

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Hello, Google for Windows (again)

First things first, the new Google Windows app is available as a simple download for anyone in the US using Windows 10 or higher and with a personal Google account. You can still install and use the software if you have a company-associated Google Workspace account, but you’ll have to sign into it with your own individual account — at least, for now.

(You also have to be 13 or older to use the app, so all the preteens out there reading Computerworld — as all the hip young status-obsessed 12-year-olds of today clearly do — kindly move along.)

Once you download and install the app, you’ll be prompted to sign in once. And from that point onward, there really isn’t much to it: You just press Alt and the spacebar together, no matter what else you’re doing, and a simple Google prompt pops up atop anything else on your screen.

The new Google Windows app is a simple prompt that appears when you press Alt and the spacebar together.JR Raphael, Foundry

From there, you can search for anything — apps or files on your local computer, documents in your Google Drive storage, and, of course, endless info from around the web.

You can search for anything — on your computer, in Google Drive, or around the web — from the same streamlined spot.JR Raphael, Foundry

When you do a more general web search, surprisingly, you don’t actually get Google’s Gemini AI chatbot serving up the answers by default. You do frequently see an AI Overview atop any regular results, but that’s the same thing you’d see if you did the same search in your regular ol’ web browser.

By default, the Google Windows app shows you regular web results — which often do include AI Overviews.JR Raphael, Foundry

There is, however, a switch: Inside the app’s settings (which are accessible by clicking your profile picture in the Google Windows app’s right corner), you can opt to use Google’s AI Mode for all general inquiries.

Google’s AI Mode isn’t enabled by default in the new Google Windows app — yet.JR Raphael, Foundry

If you flip that switch, anything you type into the app that isn’t a search for some manner of local or Drive-connected data will end up in an interactive chatbot-style question-and-answer session instead of in a more traditional web-style search result listing.

An AI Mode switch brings a chatbot-style interface into the Google Windows app (for better or maybe sometimes for worse).JR Raphael, Foundry

The Google app’s pop-up also has a camera icon toward the right side of its search box. Clicking that lets you draw a rectangle around any area of your screen and then search for whatever’s inside it in Google — and, if you’re feeling especially saucy, also ask questions about what the screen capture contains.

The Google Windows app can capture and then analyze screenshots on your behalf.JR Raphael, Foundry

If the area you outline has words within it, the Google app will even let you copy the text out of the image for later pasting or translate the text instantly into another language. It’s essentially like having a version of the excellent Google Lens Android app at your fingertips and available anytime, right within Windows.

Google Lens, in Windows — essentially — with the new Google Windows app.JR Raphael, Foundry

However you end up using it, the new Google Windows app gives you a swift and effective way to find anything — within your own local/Drive info and more broadly around the web — without having to make your way over to a prompt inside some specific program or having to rely on Microsoft’s much clunkier native Windows search systems. And it gives you the power to interact with info on your screen in all sorts of interesting ways, too, without having to interrupt your workflow or stop what you’re doing.

It makes Google feel like a native part of Windows, in other words — which is refreshingly useful from the perspective of a Windows user who’s already deeply engrained in the Google ecosystem, for one, and is also incredibly clever from the perspective of Google at a time when the company’s reach and presence in our lives is increasingly coming under question.

The one big surprise so far is that Gemini and the general Google AI systems aren’t more front and center in the new app, but I’ve gotta think that’s a deliberate decision to get folks comfortable with using it as a search tool first and foremost and then ease ’em into the idea of relying more on Gemini slowly over time. Clearly, Google’s primary goal at the moment is getting Gemini in front of us everywhere and convincing us all to treat it as an all-purpose assistant and answer engine — in spite of the very troubling limitations and liabilities leaning on it or any other large-language model AI engine in that manner presents.

But be that as it may, it’s easy to see how this new Windows app creates a foundation for furthering Google’s goals — especially in the current moment of uncertainty around changing tech habits. And, having used the tool for a little over a day now, it’s equally easy to see how it creates an instantly helpful and enticing benefit for anyone getting down to business in a Windows-centric world. It’s the rare alignment of company and consumer interests, which feels like a win-win worth celebrating.

The only real question in my mind is if Google will actually stick with this or if it’s destined to become yet another promising project that ends up in the ever-expanding Google graveyard. And that, unfortunately, is a question that even Google itself and all its AI-aided searching sorcery can’t yet answer.

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