Google has invented a new search gesture for touch devices that could help users search very easily in their devices. This invention also known as ‘continuous gestures’ is an original search-based gesture for future Android devices.
Google filed a patent for this technology last year in the 3rd quarter and it was published by the United States Patents and Trademark Office earlier this month. This was revealed by PatentlyApple recently. According to the patent, the ‘continuous gesture’ will allow users to draw circles over the content that they want to search for, on the screen. The users could draw the letter ‘g’ or ‘g+o’ to initiate the search function using Google or the letter ‘s’ which will trigger a pop-up menu for using search options such as Yahoo, Bing or Wikipedia. The search function is initiated once the user lifts his finger from the screen.
The letter ‘o’ could be drawn along with the letter ‘g’ for selecting multiple search content. The important thing to be noted is that the letters must be drawn continuously. The content can also be selected in a random manner as there is no specific order for selection. For example, multiple pieces of content can be selected with continuous gestures either by a ‘g’ or ‘s’ along with multiple figures of ‘o’ around the pieces of content. The letter ‘w’ indicates that the content has to be searched via Wikipedia.
Google is trying to maximize the touch screen capabilities for its future devices. Through this technology, Google tries to improve the user’s experience with the touch-sensitive devices. Normally the user would require to perform copy-and-paste operations or type the content to execute a search function. This is a time consuming and frustrating process for a user. Using the continuous gesture method, the user would be able to select the text easily and could perform the search in no time.
According to PatentlyApple, “The device may provide options to a user based on words, images (photo, video) that are viewable along with user selected content, such as other words/photos/videos displayed with the selected content.”
Quick and efficient searching is possible through these continuous gestures. This technology, if implemented, will definitely make searching much easier on mobile devices.
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