• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, April 10, 2019

Google has developed a tool that allows marketers and other enterprise customers of its cloud services to search through their data, regardless of any third-party platforms where it is stored.

Amazon S3, Box, and Microsoft OneDrive as well as databases such as Oracle, MySQL, and PostgreSQL, are among the storage devices, along with Salesforce, SAP, and ServiceNow.

The search tool, which launched in February 2017, previously only crawled data that companies stored in G Suite and on local servers.

In 2018, Google began offering Cloud Search as a stand-alone product, so businesses that have not yet moved to G Suite could use Google Search.

As a part of the stand-alone offering, Google made it possible for businesses to search third-party data sources from any internal data repository that has been indexed and stores in Google Cloud Search. However, users must sign up for a Google Cloud Search account before using the APIs and software development kit.

Google is also launching new ways to find files more easily in Drive with Drive metadata, according to David Thacker, VP of product management, G Suite, Google.

Metadata categories and taxonomies are created to make content more discoverable in search. It enables users to apply metadata to any file in Drive and minimize the time involved in tracking down a document.

Google also announced other upgrades to G Suite. The company has extended Voice, a telephone service that I use -- which can now cover a customer’s entire employee base, giving them access to transcribed voicemails and the ability to block spam calls. The phone number works from anywhere or on any type of device.

Voice also provides text-to-speech capabilities that can be used for recorded greetings. It also supports speech to text, providing a transcript in your email in box.