It's sort of like a widget, but sort of not. This new mobile search client from Google sits on the home screen of your S60 mobile phone. You type search queries into it directly, hit search, and Google opens your Internet connection, performs the search, and displays the results. It's the fastest way to search the Internet from your phone.The new mobile software is available for download for select S60 devices. Basically, they need to have a "Control" key or the little "Pencil/Edit" key. The N95, for example, has the pencil key, and is what I used to test out the software.

Going to the Google mobile site, it took a little bit of digging to find the app, but eventually I found it. It downloaded over EDGE in mere seconds and installed quickly. After agreeing to all the end-user licensing stuff, a little text box sits at the bottom of the home screen on your S60 phone. It goes away after a second or so. Hitting the pencil key brings it back with a cursor blinking in it. (I made sure to end my packet connection to AT&T's MEdiaNet service first). I typed out a search for "Mesa Boogie".

Once the search was typed, I simply hit the center of the d-pad on my phone, and let the search client do its thing. It opened up my browser, connected to the Internet, performed the search, and displayed my results in about 7 seconds pretty consistently.

Before, you were forced to open your browser first, get to the Google page, and then perform your search. Loading all those pages takes time (even if Google is your mobile home page). I performed the same search by going to the Google mobile site and it took about 40 seconds, by way of comparison. This native client is by far the fastest mobile search client I've used.

Now if only Google will create such a client to search the contents of the phone itself...