Search patents - in the main interface of Google

Google added a patent search to the sidebar of the main search interface, so now you don’t need to go to a separate Google Patents website to explore intellectual property.



This seems like a minor innovation (as they recently added a recipe search to the same panel), but it shows a general trend in the integration of specialized search engines. You can imagine how in the future Gmail contacts and text in Google Docs documents can also be searched from the general interface without having to log in.