Google announced that it will start providing "universal search", which isn't quite what I'd call "universal" but it's an improvement. What it means is that the search results page now includes more than just content from its web crawl. Depending on the search, you will now see links along the top to news, patents, blogs, products, maps, books, scholar, or other Google indexes. It still feels a bit beta to me; why do I see news on some searches and not others, for example. But it's an interesting development, and a great way to remind searchers that there's more out there than "merely" web pages.
Another tweak to the interface is a listing of the various search tools along the top of the search results page (and, for that matter, the main Google page). Again, a nice way to remind users that they might want to look in blogs, or images, or Google Scholar.
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