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Google Labs Offers Table-Based Search Results

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-want-chair-based-results dept.

blackbearnh writes "Google just released Google Squared into the Google Labs playground. Google Squared lets you get results back in row and column format, and then add more columns to the result set. There's a brief tour of the features over on O'Reilly Radar, where the judgement is that there's lots of rough edges, but a huge amount of potential, especially for quick and dirty table generation for reports."

14 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Bible Books by bwalling · · Score: 5, Funny

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=bible+books Who knew Esther was a babe?

    1. Re:Bible Books by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=bible+books Who knew Esther was a babe?

      Uh, the thing that stuck out at me from that list was that the book of Revelations is apparently published by Ubisoft and is preceded by the book of Devastation. How did it determine that? Why, Wikipedia's list of Xbox games, of course! I don't recall that book of the Bible from the Catholic Masses I attended as a child but it sounds pretty bitching.

      If someone made games out of the books of the Bible, I'd definitely hit up Revelations (and not that Left Behind crap) but I'd assume books like Psalms and Job would be a grind :/

    2. Re:Bible Books by hansamurai · · Score: 4, Informative

      Well, she was a concubine of Xerxes (of 300 fame) and later his wife chosen because of her extraordinary beauty (and intelligence, but whatever).

      --
      Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
    3. Re:Bible Books by treeves · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Anyone who read the book. That's who.

      Esther 2:7

      Mordecai had a cousin named Hadassah, whom he had brought up because she had neither father nor mother. This girl, who was also known as Esther, was lovely in form and features, and Mordecai had taken her as his own daughter when her father and mother died.

      Esther 2:17

      Now the king was attracted to Esther more than to any of the other women, and she won his favor and approval more than any of the other virgins. So he set a royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti.

      --
      ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
  2. How it works by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 4, Informative

    This actually seems to be a pretty simple concept. It takes the keywords on the y axis (which is the initial search), and then generates popular keywords for the x axis, and then does searches for the combinations to fill in the boxes. What goes in the box is the least amount of the target page that more-or-less fulfills the keyword search. So as near as I can tell, there's no "semantic" analysis here, it's basically a bunch of mini web searches in a grid format. It's an interesting concept, but I don't see it as any sort of world changing function, like the hype seemed to imply.

    --
    Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
  3. E=MC^2 by Celeste+R · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It doesn't take an Einstein to find out that this is good for researching things. It certainly beats going through all of the connecting websites to get to the juicy details.

    --
    There are no perfect answers, only the right questions. More questions at http://foresightandhindsight.blogspot.com/
    1. Re:E=MC^2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Too bad about its accuracy though.

      Yup. I tested it out with a search on operating systems, and there are a number of hilarious misses within the results.

      For Windows, it's apparently under a free license, and it's date of birth looks like Google scraped the drop boxes for a sign-up form rather than getting the actual creation date of Windows.

      For Linux, it was a bit off course and grabbed a description of Ubuntu, instead. It lists the current version as 2.1 which doesn't make sense for either Ubuntu (9.04) or the Linux kernel (2.6.29.4 or 2.6.30-rc8). I suspect it grabbed the version of a random Linux app.

      Darwin resulted in the biggest miss, as one might suspect. It grabbed the biography and birthday of Charles Darwin.

  4. First thoughts by unfasten · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My first thoughts after trying a few of the example searches on the main page are that it seems to be aimed a bit at Wolfram Alpha. It isn't as broad as Wolfram Alpha but it is focused on giving back data sets instead of a list of search results.

  5. Already better that Alpha by Lord+Byron+II · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In fifteen seconds of playing around with it, I already feel like I'm able to get better data and have better control than I do with Wolfram Alpha.

    1. Re:Already better that Alpha by Ed+Avis · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, I typed in geniuses and it completely failed to mention the wisest human alive, Steven Wolfram. So I think it's pretty darned incomplete, especially compared to such an unprecedented knowledge-processing breakthrough as Wolfram Alpha.

      --
      -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
    2. Re:Already better that Alpha by Gulthek · · Score: 4, Interesting

      No data analysis! GS and WA are completely different beasts.

      In Google Squared:

      Try getting a square with the five largest countries by area. (In Wolfram|Alpha search for five largest countries by area)

      Try to mathematically manipulate results like, say, dividing power usage of the united states by its population. (In Wolfram|Alpha search for united states electric production / population

      Try to get GS to do anything like growth charts, ISS location calculations, morse code translation, puzzle solving, food calorie counting, differential equations.

      Also the data is much less complete. Check out Google Squared's results for the escape velocities of the moons of Mars. Now check Wolfram|Alpha's. Yeah, there's a reason that WA is citable as a primary source.

  6. Just goofing around by CopaceticOpus · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yahoo URL: "No value found"
    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=search+engines

    Random fun:
    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=large+noses
    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=lolcat+pictures

    Reply if you find other amusing queries!

  7. Mixed results by gaspyy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The default result sets are more than useless - are laughable.
    I searched for europe demographics and it automatically created a set of rows that was made of Gibraltar, Isle of Man and Faroe Islands; for columns it created Image, Description, Language, Capital and Currency. The same search on Wolfram Alpha produced clear, concise results.

    Eventually, I could get good results on Squared too by starting with an empty square and adding rows and columns myself. Took about 10 minutes; I could have made a simple search to get the same results.

    I realize Google-bashing is dangerous around here, but they definitely have to improve Squared if they want it to be useful.

  8. Wow. Pretty cool. by sootman · · Score: 5, Informative

    But when I asked for http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=supermodels I couldn't help but notice it was missing a few key columns.

    HOLY CRAP! This post started out as a joke but then I then typed 'measurements' into the 'Add columns' box and it effing worked! Then click in the 'Add items' in the lower left, add the 5 suggestions, do that a few more times, and BAM, you've got a good amount of data. Holy crap, this is neat. There goes the rest of my day. I could see using this for actual work, like bridge lengths and building heights and such.

    And it's FUN! Data appears instantly, as if by magic, complete with pictures. I've never said this in my 10+ years on Slashdot, but everyone, GO RTFA! Actually, skip TFA, just go visit the site!

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    Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.