Google experimenting with Gmail in search results

So when participating users search for “Amazon,” information from their own recent purchase confirmation emails will appear on the right rail. Or, a user could type “my flights” as a search query, and see — directly at the top of their search results — itineraries drawn from their flight confirmation emails.

“This is a baby step in a really complicated area,” said Sagar Kamdar, director of product management for universal search, speaking at a search presentation for reporters at the company’s San Francisco office.

Kamdar noted that Google’s Gmail index is larger or the same size as its Web corpus. Plus, adding users’ personal email into search needs to be private and secure. “That is such a hard problem,” he said.