Google is preparing to roll out its 2023 Refresh design in its Chrome browser. The company has recently integrated a side panel, which is heavily inspired by Microsoft’s Edge Browser, allowing users to access their favorite tools such as Bing Chat, Outlook, MSN Games, and other browser features all in one place. This side panel adds major functionality and is possibly designed for integration with Google Bard or SGE (Search Generative Experience).
As we know, Google Bard competes directly with Microsoft Bing, but the company still needs to integrate it with Google Search. Currently, Bard is a standalone web-based service. The company may use the side panel for Bard’s service. Although Google offers many customization options, the Side Panel will work in real-time alongside your primary window. You can now use Google Chrome’s Side Panel, which can be internally referred to as Search Companion, indicating that it is designed for Bard or SGE.
When you open the side panel, for example, on Androidgreek.com, you will see the website details, including related searches, website descriptions, and similar articles. You can also see these same details in Edge-CoPilot in Microsoft Edge. Website details are familiar, as Google Search shows them when you search for something and click on the triple-dot menu next to the search. You can find information about this source, which provides the same information, including the website description and when Google first indexed or featured the site.
Compared to Microsoft Edge, the Side Panel in Google Chrome is still in its early preview stage, and many things still need to be added. Microsoft Edge Sidebar offers various functionalities, including Discord and Bing integration. Although it is currently in preview, we can expect that it will include Bard integration when it is officially released. The Side Panel is not new, but the new integration is a slightly new feature, and it was rolled out in March. From there, you can manage bookmarks and save articles.
If you still need clarification, this is Google’s artificial-generative intelligence in the sidebar, similar to Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot. On the other hand, SGE, or Search Generative Experience, helps you understand the topic and other viewpoints quickly by summarising the website sources you are checking and providing website insights. The interesting thing to see is how Google competes with Microsoft Edge. Microsoft Sidebar has been in use for a long time and has now matured, so we hope that when Google Sidebar is launched in Chrome, it will be polished and perform well.
If you want to use the Google Chrome Side Panel, you must download Google Chrome Canary. Recently, Google has been testing its Chrome 2023 refresh, so when it becomes public, you may see the Chrome Side Panel. It is not enabled by default; you must go to the experiment and enable it. You will simply find the Side Panel icon on the toolbar to use it. If you want to disable it, you must disable it from the Chrome Experiment by visiting chrome://flags/#side-panel and disabling it from there.