Wednesday's update marked the ongoing evolution of an app that's been around as long as Apple's App Store. What started out as a unified app for searching for websites, contacts, and businesses near your current location has added features like voice-activated searches and iPad compatibility. The 2.0.0 release puts the focus on enhancing the iPhone version. Here's what to expect when you fire up the updated app.

When you launch Google Search, the app greets you with your User ID (if you're signed in) and two shortcuts along the top of the screen--one to tweak settings and another to toggle between search results and the main app screen. Just below that, you'll find the Google logo (sometimes depicted as the doodle of the day), a text entry area, and shortcuts to Google Apps, Voice, and Goggles.

To begin, enter a search term either by typing or selecting the Voice or Goggles shortcut. You'll see the results list with the search text at the top, and a navigation bar along the bottom to filter the results.

For instance, Google Search gives you the option to view Everything (all results) or specific result types such as Images, Places, News, Shopping, Videos, Blogs, Discussions, and Books. However, as you begin to swipe down the list of results, this navigation bar along with the top text area disappears, revealing a clean, full-screen view of those results. Don't worry: These UI elements re-appear once you swipe back to the top.

Of course, the whole point of doing a search is to view the results, and Google has made that a lot more fun and useful in version 2.0.0 of Google Search. When you select a result, such as a Web page, that page opens in a built-in browser that slides in from the right. To get back to the results, you just swipe that page back to the right. A tab along the top of the screen hints that the results lie just beneath, making that swipe an intuitive action.