Thursday, May 14, 2009

Google making Your Life Easier...... or Not?

A Business Week article announced that Google unveiled several updates to its search engine that take advantage of the increasing sophistication of the Web. The new offerings include Google Search Options, Google Squared, and an astrology-related Sky Map app.





Is life getting Better or just more complex?



I am sure it depends a lot on your perspective...and which side of the techy learning curve you are on. for me, I am not sure that all these bells and whistles are netting us progress in our daily productivity.



I do know of several larger organizations which are benefitting greatly from Google's technology as well as her generosity in sharing technology. Thank Goodness for Googles business model in that it allows for almost any of us to get our hands on specialized information about almost any topic in the world in just seconds and for free. Now THAT is a true benefit and I applaud them for it.



Trends indicate that Google is looking for more ways to monitize it's traffic. Wouldn't YOU?



Here's what else Businessweek had to say:

Google Search Options is a "rich set of tools that let you slice and dice your results," Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, said during a presentation at Google's Mountain View headquarters.Specifically, once a user conducts a normal Web search, the user can drill down into different genres, including elements of time, visualization tools, and recently added blogs or images, combining a variety of Google search products into one.



The first enhancement users will notice is a small blue "show options" link in the light blue bar above the first page of their search results. By clicking on the link, people can choose to separately view results that are videos, reviews, or forums. Or they can sort the results by time, choosing to review results that were published only during the past 24 hours, the past week, or the past year.Options include a lighthearted "Wonder Wheel," which is a visual representation of suggestions for refining a search arranged like spokes of a wheel and a data-scraping experiment called Google Squared.



Google Squared will present information gathered by its Web crawler in square tables, rather than in a list of search results, so that people can quickly compare information on products or research topics.Google also introduced a new mobile phone application called Sky Map. Using a smartphone’s global positioning system capability, compass, and accelerometer, Sky Map can draw a real-time map of the stars that takes into account exactly where users are standing and even which direction they are facing.



Incredible, huh? All still for free. In the meantime who is going to help me with me electronics drawer? How did all those blue tooth gadgets, telephone chargers and mouses grow there?

No comments: