We're Bing fans here, but Google is still the most popular search engine. If you prefer to use Google, you can change the default search engine in Microsoft Edge from Bing to Google. You can also use the Google app from the Windows Store, which was updated earlier last week for Windows 10. What exactly can you do with it? We'll show you in our hands-on video.
When you open the Google app, the search form appears immediately front and center. As you start typing, the search box moves up, and Google tries to predict what you are searching for. Hit enter or tap one of the predicted words to perform the search. If you've used google.com from your browser, this feels very familiar. If you like, you can use the Google app as your browser. Any links you click on opens up within the app. This action can be changed in the settings to open in your default browser instead.
The Google app for Windows also features voice search. Tap the microphone icon inside the search box and say what you want to search. The results show just as fast as asking Cortana, but, of course, there's an extra step of having to open the Google app first. On the other hand, you can just tap Cortana's mic button in the Windows 10 taskbar or use the keyboard shortcut, Windows key + C.
There is a sign-in button on the top right corner of the Google app. Signing into your account adds the option to enable Personalized search. This option displays search results are not only based on the relevance of each web page to the search term but also on which websites the you've visited through previous search results.
Signing into your Google account also loads your personalized content when you open the "applications" within the Google app. Tap the dialer icon on the top right corner to open the Applications section. From here, you can open other Google services like Gmail, Calendar, Drive, News, Photos, Youtube, Maps, and more.
If you ever need to go back to the home page, just tap the down arrow from the top right corner and tap the home icon that appears at the bottom. You can also access the settings from here. The settings panel lets you turn on/off opening all links in the default browser and turn on/off personalized search. You can also disable Voice search from here, but why would you?
The Google app is the only application from the company in the Windows Store so far. There's currently no dedicated apps for other services like Youtube, Gmail, Google+, and Google Maps. The Google app doesn't provide much more features than simply going to google.com on your browser, but if you like having all of Google's services within one app, then you'll probably want to pin this app to Start or even the taskbar. The voice search is also pretty fast.
Do you want to see more apps from Google appear in the Window Store? Which app do you want to see next?
