For the Sake of Unity, Google News Has Integrated the Search the Web Button

Over the past several months, Google has been working on revamping the looks of all of its products. The new design is supposed not only to look good, but to also feel familiar no matter what site you're on. All of this and have to be practical at the same time, of course.

Being such a large undertaking, it's no surprise that Google still hasn't finished rolling out the new look to all sites and it's no surprise that it's still tweaking some things.

When it unveiled the redesign for the Google News portal, it had a peculiar feature, one that wasn't included in any of the other sites, an extraneous "Search the web" button next to the regular search button.

Its function was obvious, but it did feel a bit out of place and it certainly didn't help with the unification process.

Seeing as one of the big goals of the new design was to have a near identical top part, the navbar and the header, across all Google sites, this extra button didn't fit in. That's especially true now that the navbar has been integrated into the header.

Perhaps it's no surprise then that it has been removed and its functionality built into the regular search box.

The search box is a bit different than the regular Google search box. For one, it doesn't have Google Instant. Second, below the regular news-related suggestions, there is also the option of searching the web rather than Google News.

You can do this by simply pressing Shift+Enter, selecting the entry with your pointer or just use the arrow keys to move down the suggestion list. The ability to search the web rather than inside the site you're using is available in other places, Gmail for example.