Sources: Google developing third-party iOS keyboard with gesture-based typing, integrated web search, and GIF search
Google is making a keyboard for the iPhone — Google has been developing a third-party keyboard for iOS that would put the company's search engine in a highly used part of the interface, The Verge has learned.
Context & Ripple Effects
This scoop landed two months before Google confirmed it: the rumored keyboard shipped as Gboard in the US, putting web, GIF, emoji, and place search directly into iOS text entry. It also arrived weeks after Giphy staked out the same surface with its own Giphy Keys keyboard, making the iPhone's keyboard slot a contested search-and-media entry point rather than just a typing tool.
Google then treated the keyboard as a product line, not an experiment: the Android keyboard was renamed Gboard with search built in by year's end, and the iOS Search app absorbed Gboard alongside a widget and 3D Touch shortcuts in 2017.
First-order effects
- Google gains a persistent search box inside iOS — on Apple's home turf, where its search app alone had limited reach — with every query and GIF lookup routed through Google services.
- Giphy Keys immediately faces a bundled rival that pairs the same GIF search with full web search and gesture typing at no extra install decision.
Second-order effects
- GIF suppliers become distribution battlegrounds: whoever owns the keyboard controls which media library users reach without leaving the conversation, pressuring Giphy to deepen its own keyboard investment.
- Cross-platform brand consolidation follows — folding the Android keyboard into the Gboard name lets Google ship one feature set (search, emoji search, number row, multilingual support) across both mobile OSes instead of maintaining divergent keyboards.
Third-order effects
- Search distribution migrates from the homepage and dedicated app into input surfaces embedded in rival operating systems — a structural bet that the next query happens wherever the cursor already is, not in a browser tab.
- If keyboards keep absorbing search, media lookup, and voice input, they become the de facto assistant layer on iOS, shifting leverage over user intent away from platform owners toward whichever company owns the text-entry layer.
The trend: Search engines are embedding themselves into the keyboard and input layers of rival mobile platforms, turning text entry itself into a distribution channel for queries and media lookups.