Google searchology event news
Jinfo Blog

13th May 2009

By Penny Crossland

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Google has been busy recently launching new services, such as News Timeline and Similar Images, as reported by Diana Nutting last month http://www.vivavip.com/go/e19021. It is also worth mentioning that Google now includes US public data in its search results, along with accompanying interactive charts (http://digbig.com/4yrye). A search on Google for unemployment rates or population data in California for example, will now show results first from official government bodies. Links to charts allow searchers to compare data with other states or counties. This will be a useful addition to Google content, especially if in future, public data from other countries is included. At this week’s Google searchology event (http://digbig.com/4yryc) Vice President of Core Search, Udi Manber was almost evangelical in his belief in the importance of search engines. In one speech, he stated that whereas the 20th century was about ‘conquering nature’, the 21st century was all about ‘understanding people’, with web search playing a large part in that quest. Much talk was also of fine-tuning search, by improving the ‘did you mean?’ function, real-time searching and launching new search options (http://digbig.com/4yryb). Real-time searching seems to be causing Google senior executives some headaches, especially since Twitter seems to have beaten them to it with the launch today of their own real-time search function. Google’s new search option allows users to filter their searches by types of results (e.g. videos, forums or reviews) time (recent results, past 24 hours, past week or past year) and related searches, such as the new timeline option. The company’s recently updated news service (http://news.google.com/) allows you to click on a link beneath each news item to display a range of content on the topic from various sources. For top-level news, both global and local, this function looks like a useful news aggregation tool. Finally, Google introduced an application called SkyMap for Android (http://www.android.com/about/) phones (http://digbig.com/4yryd). What at first looks like an interactive star map, this impressive application is really a virtual viewfinder for space. SkyMap’s database allows you to search for and identify stars and constellations by tapping into the phone’s compass and accelerometer. A stargazer’s dream come true!

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