Despite having fantastic technology and a stranglehold on search traffic, Google couldn’t make its Stadia game streaming service work. That’s all the better for the likes of Microsoft and Nvidia. Now they’re the ones getting prominent game streaming placement in search results. Google has officially announced the ability to launch cloud games from these results. Of course, it neglected to mention Stadia, which is headed for shutdown in just a few weeks.
Google began testing this feature in August, and at the time, Stadia was still technically operational. It wasn’t until the following month that Google announced that it was going to kill the service, which lasted less than three years. Back when Google was testing this feature with Stadia, the search page seemed to focus mostly on games that were included in the Pro subscription. It offered a trial for users who were not already paying for Pro, but Google doesn’t have a window into your subscription status on other services.
Google’s announcement that you can “search and launch video games in the cloud instantly with Google” confused at least a few people, since that sounds like Google might be hosting the games, but the feature only links to games on other platforms. Google’s own Stadia service is in the process of shutting down and won’t be accessible at all starting January 18, 2023.
The new search feature is similar to functionality available on the first wave of cloud gaming Chromebooks, which can display available cloud games in the system search bar, alongside web and app results. The links should be available for everyone in both desktop and mobile Google Search.
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