Google search via e-mail

I’ve updated Mixamail to access Google search results via e-mail.

For those new here, Mixamail is an e-mail client for Twitter. It lets you read and update Twitter just using your e-mail (you’ll have to register once via Twitter, though).

Now, you can send an e-mail to [email protected] with a subject of “Google” and a body containing your query. You’ll get a reply within a few seconds (~20 seconds on my BlackBerry) with the top 8 search results along with the snippets.

It’s the snippets that contain the useful information, as far as I’m concerned. Just yesterday, I managed to find the show timings for Manmadan Ambu at the Ilford Cine World via a search on Mixamail. (Mixamail win, but the movie was a let down, given expectations.)

You don’t need to be registered to use this. So if you’re ever stuck with just e-mail access, just mail [email protected] with a subject “Google”.

PS: The code is on Github.

Comments

S Anand 29 Dec 2010 3:48 pm: Sorry about that, Shankar. I’ve fixed that. (Simple bug: was looking for registration even though it wasn’t required)

Shankar V 29 Dec 2010 5:36 am:AnandI tried to send an email to this id with subject Google and emial body text “Retail industry IT trends”. I got the following response. Anything I missed?

Hi Shankar Viswanathan,You just mailed us. But we’re not sure we’ve been introduced, so here goes:We’re Mixamail.Mixamail lets you access Twitter via e-mail. This is useful if you have e-mail but not Internet access (e.g. on your BlackBerry).You haven’t yet logged in, but you can still search for public tweets. Mail [email protected] with a subject “Search whatever-you-want”. We’ll reply with tweets mentioning whatever-you-want.But if you log in at http://www.mixamail.com and give [email protected] access to your Twitter account, you can read and update tweets too.Enjoy!Mixamailhttp://www.mixamail.com/

Aditya Deo 3 Jan 2011 12:22 pm: Ohh! So it’s developed by you? This service is terrific! :) Thanks!

Yasuro 3 May 2011 11:00 am: Is your service working? It worked beautifully with the sample query in your article, but when I tried “who is Obama,” I got “No search results.”

Yasuro 3 May 2011 9:52 am: Great service, Shankar. I have unlimited email on my Android cell phone, but not Internet in general. So this is precisely the kind of service I was looking for. I am wondering if you could create a separate email address for this, e.g., [email protected], so we can skip the step of inputting “Google” in the subject field. The email app my cell phone carrier supplies is flawed, so you cannot automatically fill the subject field. Because of the non-standard-conforming behavior of the email server of the carrier, that is the only app that you can use to send and/or receive emails; I cannot use any other email client. :( I’d appreciate it if you could consider it. Thank you. Yasuro