A few days ago, Google announced that Stadia — their cloud-based online gaming service and web platform — would finally be getting a search bar. The internet was split. Half the people reacting were happy about this change and the other half were baffled that there wasn’t a search bar yet. But now it is and it has finally rolled into my account, so here’s a review of the Google Stadia search bar.
It searches but somehow it doesn’t actually do it all that well.
To test the search bar, I decided to look up Destiny 2, a game that is on multiple platforms but crucially launched on Stadia in November 2019. It should be easy to find! When typing in Destiny 2, however, it autopopulated some suggestions of what I might be looking for.
To its credit, the search bar showed Destiny 2 right at the top, but then foreign language versions of Destiny 2’s different editions were below it. Curious, I decided to see what clicking those entails.
Turns out it’s nothing! No results for a thing outright suggested in my search results! This is odd, I think, so I backspace and notice something even more odd. The title Destiny produced foreign language results that had no associated page for my account, but the word Destin? As in, Destiny without the y? That’s money, baby.
What does this mean? I have no idea. But as much as I was laughing about Stadia needing to slowly roll out a search bar over days, 17 months after it originally launched, it kind of seemed like it needed it? And maybe still needs more time?
But what would Google know of search bars, really.
