Google Drive now supports natural-language search

Google today announced the release of new features for its Google Drive cloud file syncing and sharing service. Now the tool will offer suggestions for misspelled words when you type in the search box. And also, you can go ahead and type with the same words that you would use if you were speaking when you’re trying to find specific documents.

The addition of this feature, known as natural-language search, means that you no longer need to type in only the words that are in the name of a file. You can say something like, “show spreadsheets from 2015” and out come some search results, along with, potentially, a “Did you mean” suggestion to refine your query. Google uses natural-language processing (NLP) for web search, and now it’s more widely available.

“Drive NLP will get better with each query — so keep on searching,” Google product manager Josh Smith wrote in a blog post.

Third-party developers, like Peruse, have sought to improve cloud file syncing and sharing with natural-language search, but now it’s part of one of the most popular offerings. Google Drive had more than 240 million users as of October 2014.

Other features in this release include a new way to arrange a Google Docs file in columns and an option for saving a non-Google file to your Google Drive once you’ve opened or edited it in Drive.

The new features are rolling out now around the world, Smith wrote.