Google's new toys

Google labs just released for your pleasure, some new toys to play with. The first is Google's Viewer, just type a few words to see a fully working preview of the web site. Another new idea: Google's Webquotes, View search results with quotes about them from other sites, and the last one is Google's Froogle, which aims to be the world's largest catalog.

Comments

that's pretty neat..

[doubleyewdee]

It seems like google is never content to rest on its laurels. Unlike some of the goneby search engines of the past it seems to be interested in doing more than pimping out its popularity to commercial interests at the cost of its quality. Hopefully they'll continue on this track for a long time to come. None of this stuff is revolutionary, but it does seem to be at least nifty. And that's all google needs at this point.

Re:that's pretty neat..

[juhaz]

Useful extra functionality sure as hells is everything but detrimental. If you don't like 'em, don't use em. But don't whine, they are not even linked on the main page. You wouldn't even KNOW about them if you don't specifically look for them in the beta pages, or see them in slashdot.

Nobody is adding bells and whistles to your basic hammer, but the company that manufactures hammers, also does some other tools. You can buy them if you like, if you don't, well, no harm done. Stop whining.

Google may well be one of the things best kept simple. Point is, Google, the search engine is as simple as it has always been.

Re:that's pretty neat..

[FyRE666]

None of this stuff is revolutionary, but it does seem to be at least nifty. And that's all google needs at this point.

You know, another neat feature I'd like (which would be extremely simple to add) would be a checkbox on their search forms, which, when checked would make all the search result links open in new windows. I know it's not hard to hold down shift when clicking a link, but I almost always flip back and forth from a single page of results till I find what I'm looking for, so I'd always have it switched on...

Re:that's pretty neat..

[Junior J. Junior III]

Actually, the search engine is probably extremely complex. It's the interface and the web site that's simple. If it wasn't this way, it wouldn't be great.

Re:that's pretty neat..

[mobets]

It already does this. Click on the preferences link. The last option is exactly what you ask for. Make sure you are accepting cookies from google and click save.

Re:that's pretty neat..

[technix4beos]

Three reasons why what you suggest are not quite appropriate.

1.) Not everyone uses cookies.
2.) Not everyone uses the same computer to use Google. Home, work, cafe, friends.
3.) Convenience. A simple checkbox next to the main display could be hit, and used at whim.

Now, I realize that the preferences are a Good Thing, and using the various methods in the browser to link a second window is good too, but not everyone likes to do it that way.

The interface that google uses is quite simple (deceptively so, cudos.) but adding this wouldn't harm it, if done properly.

I realize that perhaps this might be the start of feature creep syndrome, but that's a decision that Google will have to think on. We can merely suggest ideas. Perhaps they are listening? (I know they read /.)

Re:that's pretty neat..

[egreB]

Well, since we're on to knitpicking..

The physics involved in the action of hammering a nail into something (e.g. wood), is quite complex. But you've got a nice and fairly easy interface to it with your hammer, thus you don't need to know much physics.

Re:that's pretty neat..

[Steveftoth]

You are the reason that computers are so hard to use.

Google's interface is so easy that it HURTS. Yes it hurts. and that's the way that it should stay.

Once you go down the dark dark path of adding 'a button here' 'a button there' you will never return from that. Google has boiled down all the complexity all the redundant controls down to a simple text box and 2 buttons. There are advanced controls for those people who use it enough to want to do that. It only takes a couple of seconds to change your prefs, and if you are on a public computer, why can't you hold down the shift key (or right click).

Re:that's pretty neat..

[kpwoodr]

Check this one out, it's what I got when I quote searched for slashdot.org:

Quit Slashdot.org Today!

Funny Stuff

Re:that's pretty neat..

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

All they need to do is voice activate the thing, then I can do my Data impression

Faster....

Faster....

Move to maximum speed....

Re:that's pretty neat..

[susano_otter]

doubleeyewdee:

Hopefully they'll continue on this track for a long time to come.

iq in binary (responding):

I agree with you completely... Some things are best kept simple, GOOGLE would be one of them.

That's either an embarassing failure to preview, or a truly frightening communication breakdown.

Re:that's pretty neat..

[susano_otter]

This isn't bells and whistles, this is R&D. The best search engine in the world will still be obsolete in 5 years.

What we're really looking for is better ways to organize data for intuitive retrieval by humans. The relational database is a precursor. The rumblings we're hearing about moving beyond the desktop metaphor of UI? That's the beginning of a whole new approach to information management.

It should be fairly obvious by now that Google means to be at the forefront of these advances. And they're going about it in just the right way: start early, establish a strong business around a solid product, and use the stability and cashflow this provides to quietly start experimenting with new ideas and implementations. The guys that are building these toys are the same guys that will put Google light years ahead of the next-generation data management solutions from IBM, Oracle, &c.

Assuming everything goes according to plan, of course.

Re:that's pretty neat..

[Reziac]

Which reminds me, I left my hammer on the porch this afternoon... But you make a perfect point: Google does complex things with a simple interface. That's a great deal of why it's successful -- both at its job, and with the using public.

Now I gotta go fetch my hammer before I forget!

Re:that's pretty neat..

[jonadab]

> You know, another neat feature I'd like (which would be extremely
> simple to add) would be a checkbox on their search forms, which,
> when checked would make all the search result links open in new
> windows.

I always just middle-click them, to open them in new tabs. While
they are loading, I scroll down and middle-click several that look
promising, then I usually close the tab with the search results.
Each time I finish looking at one of the pages, I close that tab,
and look at the next one, which by that time has finished loading.

Prelim results

[gowen]

I've been playing with these since they appeared on The Register a few days ago. I can't say I'm massively impressed. The slideshow is lovely eye candy, but, sadly, the top bit of each web page it shows is all too often just a banner ad and a navbar, which isn't always a lot of use. Froogle is US-centric, and no good for me, but it is the best name I've seen in a long time.

Re:Prelim results

[mccalli]

...sadly, the top bit of each web page it shows is all too often just a banner ad and a navbar, which isn't always a lot of use

Depends on screen res. On my laptop running 1600x1200, it shows a quite a lot of the target page.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Prelim results

[Ed Avis]

Heh, perhaps the Google slideshow will encourage sites to put useful information at the top of pages rather than junk.

Re:Prelim results

[nikconwell]

... encourage sites to put useful information at the top of pages rather than junk.

You mean useful information like ads, right?

Re:Prelim results

[Ed Avis]

I mean stuff which _looks_ useful to a user seeing the search results. Information that performs the 'useful' function of getting more hits on the site (ads in themselves do not). Then you can show the users the other kind of 'useful' once they are viewing your pages.

Re:Prelim results

[aridhol]

I'd love to see DoubleClick's database after this has been running for a while.

Re:Prelim results

[harmonica]

I doubt it. It's long known that title and h1 elements are very important for Google (and recently, more and more of its competitors). Still, people often put nothing in those two HTML elements, or crap, or leave predefined values in there (like Untitled1). These people never seem to check if their own pages are in a search engine and what a query result on their pages looks like.

A lot of people just don't know or care about good webauthoring.

In case the site is slashdotted...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://192.17... oh wait!

(someone had to do it :)

Re:In case the site is slashdotted...

[radish]

Hey - if we can /. google I will be extremely impressed ;)

Re:In case the site is slashdotted...

[nolife]

To clarify the phrase..

Slashdotted

Yet another interesting Google function.

Re:In case the site is slashdotted...

[damiam]

The main Google site is impossible to slashdot - if everyone who ever looked at /. clicked a link to Google, it wouldn't even notice. However, Google's lab and beta servers aren't quite so resilient, and have been slashdotted in the past.

Let's try this one again in English

[Anonymous Coward]

Google labs just released some new toys for your pleasure. The first is Google's Viewer -- just type a few words to see a fully working preview of the web site. Another new idea: Google's Webquotes -- View search results with quotes about them from other sites. The last one is Google's Froogle, which aims to be the world's largest catalog.

Now compare that to what actually got posted above.

Google contest ideas?

[Christopher Doopov]

Are these new features based on ideas from the Google contest, which took place some time ago? If so, what are the other ideas, which are not yet implemented, but which may be used in the future?

Re:Google contest ideas?

[paranoic]

And if they were, what sort of compensation did the original contestants get? This is why a lot of people didn't enter that contest.

Re:Google contest ideas?

[crapulent]

No, I don't think this has anything to do with the Google programming contest. The winner and honorable mentions are listed on this page, and they have nothing really to do with the Google labs features announced recently. You can also read slashdot's coverage of the announcement as well as the announcement of the winners if you're interested.

Re:Google contest ideas?

[harmonica]

A competition where you have to deliver a very good idea and a decent implementation of it to have a mere chance to get USD 10000 isn't that great from a financial point of view.

Re:Google contest ideas?

[harmonica]

$10000 for a week or so worth of work isn't that great?

A mere chance of getting USD 10000 for a week of work is great? In a competition that is held world-wide? I don't think so.

If their ideas were worth so much more, why would they submit them in the first place and why aren't they already millionaires?

In this particular case you'd first have to build up the Google infrastructure. That's a bit of work. Also, I'm not talking about a million-dollar-idea. Just about the fact that working a long time for - potentially, most likely, whatever you want to call it - nothing doesn't sound so good. If this was volunteer work or writing OSS or something like that, my opinion would differ. But Google is a for-profit-organization.

I'm willing to bet the guy who won is plenty happy with his $10000 even though he likely doesn't need it given his past employment history and current position.

Sure, if you do get the USD 10000 it's fine. But most people didn't.

Re:Google contest ideas?

[harmonica]

But if it's a good idea and decent implementation then someone can use it and it might make someone's day more pleasant. Multiply that by the number of people whose days are made more pleasant, and you have something to remind yourself of if you ever wonder if your life was worthwhile.

Sigh. My point was: A lot of people working for free and one person getting USD 10000 from Google - the for-profit-organization Google - is not too smart from the point of view of the contestants. It's great for Google. If you want to do something for your fellow man on the field of software development, write good open source software. Don't give your ideas and work away for free to a company.

Then again, if you're a selfish jerk this probably won't appeal to you. Too bad, if that describes you.

It doesn't strike me as especially clever. If I give something away for free, I give it to people who need it. Google can pay for their employees.

Re:Google contest ideas?

[WatertonMan]

None of them sound like entries in the Google contest. The only entry from the contest that sounded like it had relevance to business was the one that tied geographic maps to web searches. I was actually surprised they didn't implement that one.

There are a few ideas that I'd like to see Google ad, but these are interesting, if mostly proof of concepts. Froogle in particular is a good idea but doesn't allow price comparisons like MySimon does. Were they to add that it would be considerably more useful. Further it oddly seems to leave out a lot of stores, I noticed.

The web annotation tool is also a good idea. But I have a feeling that it needs to be better integrated with the google bar. (BTW - when is a Mac version coming?) Annotation has been discussed for quite a while. I have a wrox book at home on XML Metadata that discusses a lot of this. Unfortunately in practice it has never been applied to the general web.

There are lots of features of the original hypertext research in the 60's that are yet to be applied to the web. Google utilizes some concepts for its ranking, such as "links to" information. Wouldn't it be great to have a Google bar monitoriing your pages and make suggestings for helpful pages that link to the page you are on? There are many ideas like that which would improve ones browsing experience.

There are a few privacy concerns, but I'm exciting that Google offers these tests. The news site has become my favorite site on the web. It tends to get better stories than the other meta-news site I used to visit: DrudgeReport.com

Re:Google contest ideas?

[mhesseltine]

About the mapping of searches to geographic data. There was a recent NYT article that went inside Google Labs, and in the lab, they have just that sort of thing. There's a 3-d world representation, and searches through an IP are mapped to the location of that IP. Search volume creates a color-changing peak that rises from the location. Larger volume creates a higher peak. It ends up looking like certain major cities are on fire.

I'd dredge up the /. article on it, but the /. search sucks.

Re:Google contest ideas?

[cwis42]

I'd dredge up the /. article on it, but the /. search sucks.

Google is your friend.;-)

Re:Google contest ideas?

[jonadab]

> the google bar. (BTW - when is a Mac version coming?)

You don't need a special version for the Mac. The same version that
works on all other platforms should work on the Mac. It's written
in XUL, so platform is basically a non-issue. (What version of the
browser you have, on the other hand, does matter...)

Other interesting articles

[nich37ways]

Ars technica also has review up of froogle along with a funny review of google's plan for world domination

--

nich

Re:Other interesting articles

[CvD]

Man, this Paul Ford guy who wrote the Google World Domination article is pretty smart if he came up with all of these ideas (not RDF, but how to apply them). They seem very useful. Does Google know about this? :-)

Cheers,

CvD.

Re:Other interesting articles

[Ilgaz]

Its less fun than its true...

Someone check Google's supporters at start? Being Linux/Beowulf based doesn't illumunate the darkness of the start.

C I A ?

All I have to say.

What about the other ones?

[John_Renne]

Off course all these playground-features are nice but when will anything become standard. Other beta-stuff like Google Glossary and Google Sets looked very nice but both are still in beta. Google will remain my favourite search-engine but they in my opinion they could be a bit faster in offering new services.

Re:What about the other ones?

[platypus]

I could imagine "beta" testing means beta testing attractiveness to customers. I.e. if one of the "beta" sides gets a lot of hits, google decide to put it out of beta.

Google will remain my favourite search-engine but they in my opinion they could be a bit faster in offering new services.

You are joking, right? If not, who is better in that game than google? Two or three years ago, nearly each of the ideas which google has already implemented in their "labs" could have gained a shitload of venture capital in order to implement it.
Google not fast? I think not.

Re:What about the other ones?

[PurpleFloyd]

Other beta-stuff like Google Glossary and Google Sets looked very nice but both are still in beta.

This is much more likely to be rolled out, as it is a goldmine for advertising. While the Glossary and Sets programs are nice, there's no real way to sell adwords on them. Froogle adwords, on the other hand, could likely command a premium price and thus it would make good business sense to roll out Froogle as soon as possible.

Re:What about the other ones?

[jericho4.0]

Google sets was one of the best ideas on the web that I've ever seen. I don't care if it's beta, I use it all the time.

Re:What about the other ones?

[Galvatron]

No, I think beta testing means exactly what it implies, the software is not release quality yet. At the moment, they probably don't feel like the sorting algorithm they use is "fair," and so they're still finetuning it. Clearly, this can be a lengthy process, which is why they let people use it while they're still working on it. All they're saying by "beta" is that it's not good enough to stake their reputation on, so if you use it, be aware that they think it's not up to the same standard as the rest of their work yet.

Re:What about the other ones?

[GeckoX]

Stuff on google labs is NOT BETA. It's a freaking LAB, to play with ideas and try stuff.

Google News and Froogle ARE beta, note that they are NOT on the google lab system anymore.

You could have read this yourself at labs.google.com, kinda hard to miss. Gee, they even say explicitly that just because there is a feature in google labs, that in no way means that it will ever be an actual google feature.

Re:What about the other ones?

[e40]

No, Platypus was right. Peter Norvig, Director of Search Quality at Google, said in a talk that things on labs.google.com may never see final release. It is a test ground, in all senses of the phrase (test the software, test how people like it, etc).

Re:What about the other ones?

[harmonica]

Froogle adwords, on the other hand, could likely command a premium price and thus it would make good business sense to roll out Froogle as soon as possible.

On the other hand, people who are visiting Froogle are less likely to click on advertisements. They are using Froogle because they want the best price / best availability. Why go to an online shop just because it advertizes on the same page as the query results? Unless ads are not labeled as ads anymore, but Google had to make a major policy change first.

In the normal web search results, advertisements make more sense, because - depending on what you searched for - there are not so many competing commercial offerings.

Google is coogle

[capitalsucks]

I think google is the only site that I hit at least 10x per day that doesnt have banner ads or popups. They have those things on the right of the page, but not only are those well priced for the advertiser (lik 1 penny per click) but they are also effective because they come up in a search. If the entire internet STILL had to have ads in my utopia, this is how I would prefer them.

The universal knowledge repository

[katalyst]

Google has access to so much information. A study of human behavior and interests can be made by just parking yourself at the Google HQ, where apparantly, they have lotsa screens which keep displaying the kinda stuff people are looking for. Beats trainspotting ;)
Another google toy : it's fun to use. The Google Mirror. It's a blast, you actually gotta enter your query the other way around, coz it's a MIRROR silly !!

just don't leave the window open

[Zorgoth]

I played with the google viewer a bit, I thought it was pretty cool. Except that when I did not close the window and got back to work, I noticed that it was sucking up bandwidth downloading the next pages to display. All right on my office machine, but at home through a digital straw, it would not be much fun.

The mandatory pr0n reference

[stud9920]

Yay ! Now I can keep both hands free while browsing pr0n !

Re:The mandatory pr0n reference

[leoboiko]

It would be even better if they made an equivalent viewer for images.google.com.

I tired webquotes for microsoft..

[heytal]

I think it won't work.. what i got was the latest quotes from news articles that talked about microsoft.. anyway.. interesting read..

Here's what i got:

Microsoft Corporation (1418 WebQuotes)
http://www.microsoft.com/

Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday released additional details about digital entertainment PCs coming for the holidays. But new anti-copying technology could hamper sales, say analysts and potential buyers.
Source: http://www.privacydigest.com/

Microsoft announced the latest round of Technology Leadership Grants this week. More than $3,350,000 in software will be given to five nonprofit organizations.
Source: http://www.pnnonline.org/article.php?sid=425

Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software for personal and business computing, Microsoft strives to produce innovative products and services that meet our customers' evolving needs.
Source: http://www.avs.com/partners/

Re:Froogle is great

[doubleyewdee]

Yeah, I just gave it a shot looking for a very particular piece of jewelry and I found it within about three minutes. I was really impressed. Even better, Froogle is in beta! If it already works this will as a beta product I can only imagine how great it will be when it has been rolled out.

I wonder if, given that Froogle could become quite popular, this will make it easier for small independent web-vendors to compete against giants like Amazon. One of the things I do like about Amazon is that it's pretty easy to find what I'm looking for, and they have lots of stuff (shady business/patent practices aside). However, if Froogle makes it this easy for me to find stuff from multiple small vendors then I might just stick with that.

Fun, but really that great ?

[RyoSaeba]

Just checked the viewer & the quote thingy.
Sounds fun, though i wonder how modem users will react to the bandwidth use.

Now i wonder if that'll really be that useful. The risk i see is to create 'closed' communities, ie sites that point mutually at each other, and Google will pick one & use the others' quotes, without seeking quotes from other sites.
Also how do they find quotes ? While indexing pages for search ? How do they determine which quotes will appear ? Based on commercial relations ?
I think the ultimate search tool will be able:

• to reply concisely (ie like 10 really relevant matches) to a query, instead of spitting a zillion pages, with much redundancy (tried seeking something only to find 100 results pointing to the same message in a mailing list ?). Though maybe searching from more specialized sites is better in that case
• to reply to questions like 'who is the 5th Physics Nobel Prize winner ?', but i think i'm dreaming, won't be that far (researchers are only saying they gonna succeed since 20+ years, after all)

confused by webquotes?

[Sarin]

I did some searches with no luck, then I searched for Slashdot
and it got plenty!

This is useless

[kraf]

Quotes ? Previews ?
Quite useless if you ask me.

What I would like to see is the google equivalent of metaspy. The zeitgeist thing is nice, but I don't care for most categories.
I guess they see their query database as a valuable marketing resource, but then how come they are not selling access to it ?

Re:This is useless

[PissingInTheWind]

Quotes ? Previews ?
Quite useless if you ask me.

Useless but fun!

It's 'research', they are trying out stuff. See those things as toys.

If you can't see the fun and nifty in this, you're probably not some kind of 'hacker', whatever your strong discipline might be.

And yes, Google sells access to their database as a web service, but of course it's not the 'raw' access to the database (and it would probably be pretty useless to have raw access anyway). Finally, if you *really* want access to their DB, give them a call and ask for a price: I'm sure you could set up something with them if you offer the right price.

Viewer Requirements

[rich951]

Javascript enabled

PC and Mac: Internet Explorer 5 & above, Netscape 6 & above Unix: Mozilla

Not much use to me until it works in Opera, I'm afraid! Although anything with tabbed browsing makes google searching a much happier place...

Allow me to be the first to say WTF...

[DCowern]

I never knew there was a Slashdot: Japan. Is this legit or some another cheap Japanese knockoff? (really, I'm just kidding... *flees* :-P)

In all seriousness... this is pretty neat. I never would have known that if I'd never tried their viewer. This is why google is the best. They're the only search engine that innovates. I just wonder when we'll be able to convince them to give us the source. :-)

Googlisms

[SPeW]

Hey have any of you checked out this site , not directly related to google.com but it does use their search results to return some pretty intereting stuff. check it out ... some funny stuff comes up for slashdot and Bill Gates

Re:Googlisms

[Jon Abbott]

You know, some of the results from Googlism sound like lyrics from Soul Coughing... In particular, they remind me of the song "Casiotone Nation", which keeps saying "The five percent nation of [place random thing here]" among other things.

froogle has helped me

[Anonymous Coward]

shave $30 off an order of glass petri dishses.

So Go froogle!

Google is God.

[jericho4.0]

I know I'm not saying anything new to this thread, but I have to say it.

Google defines 'best practice'. Google is the best thing on the web, bar none. Google, my friends, is God.

Re:Google is God.

[Ilgaz]

No its a Internet search engine and you don't need to be that fanatical about them

The obvious

[Faile]

I did the obvious and asked for a couple of quotes of Bill Gates...

Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday released additional details about digital entertainment PCs coming for the holidays. But new anti-copying technology could hamper sales, say analysts and potential buyers.
Source: http://www.privacydigest.com/

Microsoft announced the latest round of Technology Leadership Grants this week. More than $3,350,000 in software will be given to five nonprofit organizations.
Source: http://www.pnnonline.org/article.php?sid=425

Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software for personal and business computing, Microsoft strives to produce innovative products and services that meet our customers' evolving needs.
Source: http://www.avs.com/partners/

Apart from the somewhat biased results the feature kicks ass :)

Good, Better, Best!

[coloth]

The Viewer I'd rate "good", because it shows a path to potential interface improvements in the future, but not something I'd use today.

The WebQuotes is "better" because it leverages the architecture that Google is based on, and lets you see some of the reasons why that link is near the top.

But the Froogle service is clearly the "best". It has the potential to centralize the Internet's consumer marketplaces, enhancing competition and value. My only concern is that the big retailers will put up walls to Froogle's spiders. However, if Froogle becomes popular, they may be forced to join the party, or lose access to a growing meta-internet market.

Ladies and gentlemen, Google is reminding us that we live in exciting times.

Re:Good, Better, Best!

[Alien Being]

Pricewatch still has an advantage over Froogle in that it shows products sorted by (price + S&H).

I hope Google leapfrogs pricewatch by adding not only "shipped price", but also "ETA". I want it cheap, but I also want it ASAP.

Britney's Guide to Semiconductor Physics

[rednaxel]

When I tried search for webquotes about Britney Spears, the following site appeared:

Britney's Guide to Semiconductor Physics

From the site:

"It is a little known fact, that Ms Spears is an expert in semiconductor physics. Not content with just singing and acting, in the following pages, she will guide you in the fundamentals of the vital laser components that have made it possible to hear her super music in a digital format."

P.S. Checkout the author's page as well...

I wish I had a sig.

Re:Slashdot Japan

[pseudogratixsignatus]

Yeah, it (/. Japan) is official. It started about a year and a half ago (May 28, 2001).

Coincidence?

[Jon Abbott]

Does Froogle remind anyone else of those websites that show up when you misspell popular web addresses?

The viewer doesn't work perfectly with CSS

[pointwood]

Just look at at site that uses CSS instead of tables. The site is perfectly readable, but the design is gone.

Re:The viewer doesn't work perfectly with CSS

[Snaller]

Just look at at site that uses CSS instead of tables. The site is perfectly readable, but the design is gone.


Which is good, since so many sites become unreadable BECAUSE of CSS.

Follow: most webmasters (>90%) don't use stylesheets as they were intended, namely as a relative definition. They define all fonts as ABSOLUTE sizes, if you do that the font size can't be adjusted in Microsoft Internet Explorer - ie, if your sight, like mine, isn't 20/20 it can be hard to read a lot of pages. If they had designed them with just a little bit of care, and used relative font sizes instead, they would be scalable and readable. If you tell that to the webmasters they either don't know what you are talking about or tell you to get lost (in varying degrees of politeness)

Re:The viewer doesn't work perfectly with CSS

[pointwood]

Use Mozilla or some other browser which lets you adjust the font size then. Or is that not possible?

Froogle outside of the states

[dew-genen-ny]

The Viewer seems really slick, I'll definately be using that.

However I'd really like to see them push the boat out and give people the option of using froogle outside of the states. Froogle really does look like a great service, which makes it all the more frustrating.

Now that there is a common currency for most of Europe, surely it can't be too hard to extend this.

oh no, lawsuits.

[kevin lyda]

google webquotes is awesome. it is just so useful in what i do from time to time: research companies or commercial technology.

but it's like a lawsuit magnet. argh. i fear it will cause more problems then it will solve.

in the meantime, why does the irish linux user's group show up in hotwired japan? (found via: this search)

Upcoming Google Service

[pipingguy]

Search engine for obscure food spread products.

Re:Froogle is great

[octalgirl]

Let's hope Poindexter and his Total Information Awareness proposal doesn't get hold of this.

Canada might be interested too: "help build invaluable databases that will facilitate the management of copyrights, improve copyright compliance, increase royalties to Canadian content creators, and promote the use of Canadian content throughout the world."

But really, I love Google. As a service and so far as a company. They must spend a lot of their re-investment into the company on new developments. Their eye is truly on the future, where other companies spend most of their time maintaining poor products because they didn't put enough thought into it in the first place. I just hope they are on the moral and ethical side of things and don't let their ingenuity be sold-out to the highest bidder.

Froogle already being spoofed?

[Mantrid]

Just to test it out I typed 'Rygar' into Froogle (a new PS2 video game)...one of the resulting prices was a little...off. Visiting the relevant site turns up the same price as everyone else.

Are they already spoofing froogle results?

Re:Prelim results: Viewer!

[gowen]

I searched for my own name,

I searched for my name, and all I got was the top of a lot of /. comment pages... :(

Froogle comments

[Plutor]

My very first impression of Froogle is this: I'd like to see the groupings sorted a lot more finely. For example, I'm looking for a nice coffee thermos or mug or something. The closest I can get is the "Food & Gourmet > Beverages > Coffee" group. I'd really like "beans", "mugs and carrying things", "brewing machinery", etc. sub-groups. Granted, I could search for it, but I've always liked thorough directories when I'm searching for a class of things instead of an actual name of a product.

FROOGLE test number one failed

[Conspire]

Searched for a powerbook G4 (gotta get one of those), and up comes up listings of 500mhz G4 for 3500 $US, HELLO GOOGLE FROOGLE TEAM ------- this is very very outdated.

Re:FROOGLE test number one failed

[thunderbird46]

That's not necessarily outdated. There are people out there selling old Macs for insane prices. For example today I saw a site advertising a refurbished 500 MHz new-style iBook for $1,130. That's $130 more than Apple charges for a brand-new 700 MHz machine now.

Don't forget Google SlashCache

[Drunken_Jackass]

Automated redirection to Google's cached version of the site at the first site of a Slashdotting is also now available as a free service.

Enough already!

[fleener]

These new Google services are more feature creep. How about less frill and better search?

The quality of search results is going down, in my opinion. More often I find myself using other search engines because my Google searches turn up junk. Let us tweak the ranking criteria so we can bypass the web sites that have engineered themselves to be at the top of the results.

of those three, froogle is the only one useful

[AssFace]

at least for me.
the first one is annoying and I have no need at all for it.
the best part about it is the cute little bunny icon.

the second one is also useless to me, I much prefer just a regular search with the small snippet from what is on that page, from that page - I don't care what other's say about it on their pages.

but I really like the froogle thing. aside from the naming scheme that is sesame street in style, it actually provides something useful in today's consumer world.
as long as we can buy things, we are a better people.
bless us jesus.

Mozilla

[n-baxley]

At least this works on Mozilla unlike the Google toolbar provided by Google. (I know there's a third party version). I hope this is a sign of things to come.

Re:Mozilla

[arkanes]

The google toolbar does some other slick stuff, like letting you hilight search terms on the page (the way the are when you view a cached page), as well as see the pagerank and some other info. It's pretty snazzy.

The Tao of Google

[Derleth]

Well, what if kerosune is a company name and I really did want to search on that and avoid kerosene? It's one thing to offer a different spelling, its another to up and change

Semi-valid, but Google does say that the term returned no results and that it took the liberty of finding a close relative that matches something. Most people enjoy this, although I must admit it surprised me the first time I saw it. (More on this later.)

Even when you don't get these kind of messages, the results are for the individual words, not the phrase.

I'll have to verify this, but I know it was partially true a long time ago (in Google terms). Google has made its phrase-searching behavior a lot more intelligent than when I started using it (including stopwords without needing plus signs to force them, not seperating logical words for special processing, etc.), and you may well be complaining about old behavior.

You want to know what my big beef with Google is? Lack of documentation. Lack of an easily-findable page that details what certain things do, and how the team has changed Google's behavior recently. Google also under-advertises its world-accessable beta features. I could have been using Google News, now a staple of my news-finding experience, long before I heard about it on a message board.

Google is the master of clean, intelligent page design. It should be able to unobtrusively work in a link to a page describing advanced functionality and beta features right on its main page. It annoys and amazes me that Google doesn't more actively tout that it is the only group paving new roads in using the Internet.

Re:The Tao of Google

[pknoll]

You want to know what my big beef with Google is? Lack of documentation. Lack of an easily-findable page that details what certain things do, and how the team has changed Google's behavior recently. Google also under-advertises its world-accessable beta features. I could have been using Google News, now a staple of my news-finding experience, long before I heard about it on a message board.

You mean like this link from the main page, (link text is "Services & Tools") which lists all the optional services?

Unless you're looking for something else. There is also this page which is reached from the "All about Google" link on the Services & Tools page. It describes all the features of the site and how they've changed recently.

I'd agree about the beta services, though. They are tricky to find if you don't know where to look (and I typically don't until I see it linked somewhere). However, a quick Google Search for "beta service" turned up some interesting links.

Re:The Tao of Google

[pknoll]

Blast on those trailing slashes. The Services & Tools page can be found here.

Google Viewer - IE specific?

[gosand]

I use Opera 6.05, and Google Viewer looks like total crap. The stories only take up the leftmost 1/6th of the browser, and scroll over the toolbar.

I am quite surprised at this, I would have expected better from them. Unless it is Opera's fault.

Semantic Web

[TuringTest]

Isn't this what the semantic web is supposed to achieve, but in the client side not in the server side? Instead of relaying on Google to supply new services from time to time, we would be able to use its database to build our own types of query.

Newsweek Article This Week

[Runny]

Google is featured in this week's Newsweek. You can find an online version of the Google article here.

Where's the revenue model?

[DABANSHEE]

IE when does the credit card/Adult verification/ActiveX home dialer funded porn-Google (poogle?) turn up?

Re:Where's the revenue model?

[mhesseltine]

I know you're being funny, but with Google selling, esentially a mini-Google for your network, and their unobtrusive but useful advertising revenue, I doubt they will have to resort to those kinds of tactics.

Although, a paid for subscription service for adult content may be a good idea. Search porn.google.com for whatever freaky fetish you have in mind. Hmm...

For those who haven't gone exploring....

[Frosty Inc.]

Google has so much more than just their search engine. For a list of other Google goodies, see Google Services & Tools.

Also, there are several more things that Google Labs has already released here. I had fun with the Google Sets...it's a different way to search, but it brings up useful results that you might not have thought of.

Google Sets

[dmomo]

Google sets lets you enter a few items. Then it displays "like" items. If you want a list of publishers, enter a few.

I tried the following: ultima online, heroin, everquest, crack
And got:

Crack
EverQuest
Ultima Online
Heroin
Asheron's Call
Diablo
Starcraft
Interstate
Quake
Anarch y Online
Cocaine
Marijuana
The Realm
Amphetamines
Alcohol
Baldur's Gate
Shadowbane
Summary
Ecstasy
LSD
Jane's USAF

Google not a portal? Yeah, right.

[BornInASmallTown]

When Google News came out, I realized something: Google is trying to be a portal without being a portal, and by doing this, they are going to own the web.

Google has long said that they have no desire to enter the portal market to compete with the likes of Yahoo!. ("No, our customers are portals like Yahoo! and AOL. We're not a portal...we are just trying to be the best search engine.") While it is true that they are the best search engine, they are using characteristics of search to become a stealth portal.

Consider the following tools available from google and their counterparts on Yahoo!:

• Search engine (cf. google.yahoo.com)
  
• Directory (cf. www.yahoo.com)
  
• People search (cf. people.yahoo.com)
  
• Address search (cf. maps.yahoo.com)
  
• Froogle directory (cf. shopping.yahoo.com)
  
• News (cf. news.yahoo.com)
  
• Stock quotes (cf. quote.yahoo.com)
  

There are more analogs between the two sites. But here's the thing: Google offers a value proposition over sites like Yahoo: Much more content and much lower overhead. Why? Because Google, as a "search engine" is simply here to Help People Find What They're Looking For. They will point us to other sites after we see our search results---it's just that our search results happen to look like tradiitonal portal pages. (In other words, news.google.com is a drop in replacement for CNN.com, only google's site is better because it contains fewer ads, less clutter, and much, much, more news.)

I think it is an interesting concept. One other poster said they thought Froogle could put Amazon out of business. In the near term--no. Longer term--yes. And this is because Google's value proposition to the user is better: I would bet money that when Froogle becomes a "release" and not just a "beta", that it has the ability to classify similar products from multiple vendors and search for the one that's the cheapest. If I can find the same books and electronics on Google that I can on Amazon, why would I go to Amazon?

Google is going to preach the "non portal" doctrine forever, however over the next 3-5 years, we will see the Google "portal" owning the web, at the expense of the Yahoo's, Amazon's, Ebay's, and CNN's of the world. This means that ad revenue on other sites will become ad revenue for Google.

Maybe this is a conspiracy theory, but I have to say that I like the way Google works, I like their site, and I'd like to see them succeed in this...they've certainly made my web searching more useful, and I'd like to see them do the same for the other tools I use in traditional portals.

WTF? (Re:Googlisms)

[bgarcia]

Heh, just for S&G's, I thought I'd try my name in googlism. The result is here . Not very flattering, is it?

So I got to wondering, "who thinks that about me and why?". So I highlighted that quote and plugged it into google

Basically, there's some retard on an inline skating forum with my name. Great. Hope my parents don't hear about googlism.

<g>

Re:WTF? (Re:Googlisms)

[susano_otter]

Basically, there's some retard on an inline skating forum with my name.

Some? They're all retards, as far as I can tell.

That forum makes Slashdot look like tea with Queen Victoria.

Same thing they do every night, Pinky.

[jmoriarty]

It's impressive to watch Google expand into the powerful internet niches like news and shopping. How long before they come out with SlashGoog and turn this place into a ghost town?

But you can have FUN with Froogle :-)

[wackybrit]

Try searching Froogle for 'buttplug' and see the first result. It's not quite what you think you'd get for that search term, but funny none the less.

Froogle has so many products in it, you can find almost ANYTHING, rude or not. I even found traditional old Branston Pickle. I also found pantyhole, dildos, and numerous other 'exotic' items.

It's fun for 10 minutes. Go play, and post the funniest searches back here.

If froogle were out sooner

[phorm]

It's really too bad that nobody saw this beta until now. It would have been a very nice and useful tool for Christmas shopping. Somewhat like ebay, but a way like finding what you want from retailers.

Online shopping is kicking up. This will be a great tool for shoppers and retailers, so long as it doesn't get hacked or biased towards certain retailers.

I don't know...

[__aaklbk2114]

but in the past, the stuff coming of of google labs seem to have much more of a cool factor. It was really innovative what they were bringing out...

however, none of these tools seem particularly interesting or even that useful.

I'd much rather use Price Grabber then froogle. I know it's a beta and all, but heck I can't even sort by the lowest price!

I'd say back to the lab with these ones.

Future Googles...

[Obiwan Kenobi]

Weather.google.com
Jokes.google.com
LanParty.goo gle.com
StarWars.google.com
NewsForNerds.google. com
GeeksWhoNeedLovin.google.com
AllYourGoogleAr eBelongToUs.google.com

and my personal favorite..

NataliePortmanNaked.google.com

How google works

[bryanthompson]

PigeonRank

I love this:
...By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings....

skynet.google.com / whining about HeUnique

[EccentricAnomaly]

Playing with Google Sets made me wonder if Google might eventually become sentient... watch out for skynet.google.com

That joke will make this post just half off-topic :) But I really want to complain about HeUnique...

I usually don't grouse when my submissions are rejected and someone else submits the same story which is then accepted... thems the breaks... but this time an Editor rejected my submission and then posted the same story reworded... yeah my wording wasn't as good (I was tired), but still if Editors will post a story without attributing the submitter it takes all of the fun out of digging around on the web for a good story.

Google Viewer doesn't work on Opera

[Dr. Zowie]

I just get a big old mess of characters all over the screen. (Opera 6.03 for Linux)

*sigh*. I woulda thought that Google, of all companies, would've worked to make sure their stuff worked on the alternative browsers.

I've always enjoyed these Google toys

[slagdogg]

My favorite is Google Sets. I use it to look for new musical artists. For example, if I type in a few band names in a similar genre that I like it returns a list containing other similar bands. If there's a name there I don't recognize, I dig up their music and usually it's pretty good.

Re:I've always enjoyed these Google toys

[spacefrog]

Google sets is great for naming machines in a server farm, too... Enter a few names from your current scheme and shazam

Re:I've always enjoyed these Google toys

[ScottMaxwell]

My favorite is Google Sets. I use it to look for new musical artists. For example, if I type in a few band names in a similar genre that I like it returns a list containing other similar bands.

I'd never thought of that, so I tried it after reading this post. I put in my three favorite bands/artists: Green Day, Rage Against the Machine, and Eminem.

The first item (other than the ones I put in) on the resulting list was "Backstreet Boys."

I think there's a reason Google Sets hasn't made it out of the lab yet. :-)

Re:I've always enjoyed these Google toys

[Drakonian]

I think it got confused when you added Eminem to the mix of Green Day and Rage. So it thought, he must like popular stuff and picked BSB.

Reputation over popularity

[kindofblue]

I think you are being over-optimistic. Google or any other search engine is NOT going to replace most of the sites you mentioned. It seems to me that you are relying on at least 2 major assumptions:

(1) Cheaper will always win.
(2) More info is always better.

But in both shopping and in information, for me at least, trust and reputation matters a lot. For shopping, I'll spend a few bucks more by getting something from Amazon, or Dell, or Apple, or Toyota, because I've been screwed by getting cheaper alternatives. My time and lack of aggravation matter a lot more to me. I'm very wary of trying new brands, especially for anything online.

As for information, reputation and editors matter a lot. Google and any other sort of collaborative filtering depend primarily on mass voting or popularity; but credibility is a nuanced thing. Many national online newspapers might be highly ranked according to Google, but when I see a news headline, I want to know what the point-of-view of the news source is, and not just that it is popular. After all, if popularity mattered above all, Britney Spears would be winning all the Grammys, and Jerry Springer would be winning the Emmys.

I use Google news all the time, but I find that it gives a lot of very obscure news sites. Even Slashdot appears in the headlines, and Slashdot is very highly biased opinion and discussion, NOT news. Basically I use Google news to find and scan for headlines, but invariably I only spend my time on a few trusted news sources. For any other unknown site, I always have to check out the site to determine their bias and credibility. I don't have the spare cognitive cycles to waste on sites that are spinning an unknown agenda.

Basically my point is that news site quality and merchant reputation matter a great deal, and portals like Yahoo or pseudo-portals Google still rely on the human-directed quality control. They are an important part of an information eco-system, as aggregators or popularity filters, but they are not the gatekeepers or the final word.

Another one

[boatboy]

Another fairly new one is https://answers.google.com/answers/main. People can use it to "name your own price" for more complex assisted searches. Looks like some of the researchers make some nice cash.

Re:Slashdot Japan - Wow!

[Rayonic]

I just tried reading Slashdot.jp translated through Babelfish, and what a trip! I know it's just a crude machine translation, but it just adds to the hilarity. Some exerpts:

* In enthusiasm of fan ring story, Japanese subtitle charge of two towers to modification (this is a story title - ed.)

* As for nine, in subtitle of the destiny which should die from section. (That story's "department" -ed.)

The mod options seem kinda neat:

* (score: It becomes 2, references)

* (score: 2, splendid discernment)

* (score: 3, it is strange funny)

And I think this is a troll:

?????(?????)??????Star Wars Episode I?
?????????
????????(?)
# google?

Star Trek????
?????
??????

SF??????????(?)

???M$?

Re:Froogle is great

[jonadab]

> Expect Google to get raped by lawsuits from Amazon et al

Three or four years ago, when Google was barely established, I might
have been somewhat concerned about that. These days, Google is...
well, they're not Yahoo!, of course, but they're not George Smith's
Cool Web Stuff, either, if you know what I'm saying.

re: Adding bells and whistles to a hammer...

[Abreu]

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