List of Google services and tools
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Google offers a variety of services and tools besides its basic web search. This is a list of Google's services and tools.
Services
Answers
In April 2002, Google launched a new service called Google Answers. It is an extension to the conventional search — rather than doing the search themselves, users pay someone else to do the search. Customers ask questions, offer a price for an answer, and researchers answer them. Researchers are screened through an application process that tests their research and communications abilities. Prices for questions range from $2 to $200; Google keeps 25% of the payment, sends the rest to the researchers, and charges an additional $0.50 listing fee. Once a question is answered, it remains available for anyone to browse for free. This service came out of beta in May 2003 and presently receives more than one hundred question postings per day. Google states that asking questions about Google is not allowed on Google Answers.
Blog Search
On September 14 2005, Google launched Blog Search. It is Google search technology focused on blogs. Your results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger as their blog index is continually updated. You can search not just for blogs written in English, but in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and other languages as well.
There are different ways you can get to Blog Search:
- blogsearch.google.com
- search.blogger.com
- The Blogger Dashboard
- The Navbar on a Blog*Spot blog
Catalogs
As of September 2005, Google Catalogs is in the beta stage. Numerous (over 6,600 at the time of this writing) print catalogs are archived on Google as scanned image files. Through the use of character recognition, users can search for a text string in these catalogs in a fashion similar to how they would for materials on the general web. Matching results are displayed through thumbnails of the pages on which the text was found, with the specific area of the page where the search result is found shaded in a yellow box. Another image file next to the thumbnail, a shrunk version of the highlighted area on the thumbnail, highlights the exact location of the search result. Users can then access the page of the catalog (as a larger graphic file) and change pages by using a navigation bar positioned above the page image. It might be worth noting that one can access the catalogs without a search as well.
Directory
The directory is a subset of the links in Google's database arranged into hierarchical subcategories, like an advanced Yellow Pages of the web. The original source of the directory, and the categorization is the Open Directory Project (ODP), which publishes an easily parsed version of its database in Resource Description Framework format for other sites, like Google, to use for derivative directories.
Froogle
- Main article: Froogle
Froogle is a price engine that searches online stores for particular products. It is also offered in Wireless Markup Language (WML) form and can be accessed from cellphones or other wireless devices that have support for WML.
Groups
Google maintains a Usenet archive, called Google Groups (formerly an independent site known as Deja News). Google is currently testing a new version of its Groups service, which archives mailing lists hosted by Google in addition to Usenet posts, using the same interface as Gmail (see below). Formally known as "Google Groups Beta," the new version of Google Groups is much more advanced than the last, letting you more easily join a group, make a group, and track your favorite topics. However, many users preferred the old interface and find the new one cluttered.
The original Google Groups interface, which was preferred by a great number of regular Usenet posters to the current Beta version, due to its closer adherence to established Usenet Netiquette, was available until May 4, 2005, on the foreign domains http://www.google.ca and http://www.google.co.uk. "Classic" coverage was rolled back from the foreign domains over the next few months, and as of July 2005 is still available only on mirrors for which the beta interface has not been translated, such as http://www.google.co.il and http://www.google.tm.
- See also: X-No-Archive
- Google Groups Classic website
- Google Groups Beta website
- List of unfixed bugs in Google Groups Beta
- Notable messages in the Google Groups Usenet archive
Images
In 2003, Google announced Google Images, which allows users to search the web for image content. The keywords for the image search are based on the filename of the image, the link text pointing to the image, and text adjacent to the image. When searching for an image, a thumbnail of each matching image is displayed. Then when clicking on a thumbnail, the image is displayed in a frame at the top of the page and the website on which that image was found is displayed in a frame below it, making it easier to see from where the image is coming.
Labs
- Main article: Google Labs
Google Labs consists of all of Google's experimental technologies. Google Labs is akin to a directory page that links to all Google technologies under development or in beta that have not yet been made widely available. From the Google Labs home page, a user can access Google Suggest, Google Desktop Search, and other web technologies.
Local
Google Local helps you focus your search on a specific geographic location. Sometimes you want to search the whole worldwide web, and sometimes you just want to find an auto parts store within walking distance. The service lets you search for a "What" such as pizza and a "Where" such as Poughkeepsie, New York. The purpose of Google Local is to help people find local businesses. Not only does Google Local display the website of the businesses, but often times it will also display the phone number and address. On October 6, 2005 Google integrated Google Maps functionality into its Local service.
- Google Local website
- Google Local website(China)
- Google (October 6, 2005). Google Merges Local and Maps Products. Press Release.
Maps
- Main article: Google Maps
On February 8, 2005, Google introduced a beta release of an online map service called Google Maps, which only covered the USA, Canada, the UK and Ireland. It can interact with Google Local to restrict results to a certain areas. The service features draggable maps, a location search, and turn-by-turn directions. It has received early praise for the speed of its operation, produced by the pre-rendering of the maps it uses. [1] It currently works with Internet Explorer, Mozilla-based browsers (such as Mozilla Firefox), Opera and Safari web browser. On April 4, 2005, Google added satellite imagery to Google Maps. Originally limited to North America and the United Kingdom, the satellite imagery was extended to whole world in June 2005.
Mobile
Allows users to search using Google from wireless devices such as mobile phone and PDAs.
Moon
- Main article: Google Moon
On July 20, 2005, in honor of the first manned Moon landing on the 20 July 1969, Google has added NASA imagery to Google Maps. As a joke, the closest zoom level features an image of cheese instead of the moon surface. This plays on the English expression that "the moon is made out of green cheese."
News
- Main article: Google News
Google introduced a beta release of an automated news compilation service, Google News, in April 2002. There are different versions of the aggregator for more than 20 languages, with more added all the time. While the selection of news stories is fully automated, the sites included and the algorithms that choose the news articles to be displayed are selected by human editors, and the choices have occasionally led to some controversy.
Personalized Homepage
- Formerly Portal or Google Fusion
In May 2005, Google introduced Personalized Homepage, giving the ability to customize the default Google home page. In order to use the Google service, the user must first have a Google account. It allows users to have a homepage customized to their taste with, among other things, Google Search, an at-a-glance headline view of top stories from numerous websites including Slashdot and CNN, as well as offering your local weather. The user can select certain items to appear on their portal. Preselected news feeds can be chosen, or customized RSS feeds can be used. Among available pre-determined feeds are the BBC, CNN and Slashdot along with many others. On 14 September 2005, [Google moved the homepage out of Google Labs]. The "IG" in the address stands for "I Google".
Personalized Search
By making use of Google's Search History feature, this service allows users to create a profile based on their prior search history. Future search results can be prioritized on an individual basis on the information collected.
In August 2004, Google announced its new Google Print service. This tool searches the contents of books submitted by publishers and displays matches above web matches on the search result page. It offers links to purchase the book, as well as content-related advertisements. Google will limit the number of viewable pages from any book through user-tracking. [2] As of early January 2005, this service remains in the beta stage. A similar service is offered by A9.com.
In December 2004, Google announced an extension to its Google Print program. [3] It is a non-exclusive deal with several high-profile university and public libraries, including the University of Michigan, Harvard (Widener Library), Stanford (Green Library), Oxford (Bodleian Library), and the New York Public Library. According to press releases and university librarians, Google plans to have approximately 15 million public domain volumes online within a decade. [4] [5] [6] [7]
See also: List of digital library projects
Scholar
In November 2004, Google released Google Scholar, which indexes and searches academic literature across an array of sources and disciplines. Results are ranked by "relevance", which is based largely on the number of citations and in this sense is similar to PageRank. Google Scholar appears to be strongly based on the ideas behind Citeseer, as described in the paper Digital Libraries and Autonomous Citation Indexing [8]. "Stand on the shoulders of giants" appears as a motto on the Google scholar main page.
Search History
- Formerly My Search History
Keeps a record of all searches and clicked results while a user is logged into a Google Account and allows this to be accessed and searched. This also tracks images viewed from Google Images.
Special Searches
Allows users to perform special searches such as U.S. Government Search, Linux Search, BSD Search, Apple Macintosh Search, and a Microsoft Windows Search.
SMS
Use text messaging for quick info.
Suggest
A new feature called Google Suggest was introduced [9] on December 10, 2004. It provides an autocomplete functionality that gives the user suggestions as they type. JavaScript is used to rapidly query the server and update the page for each keystroke that the user types.
The feature quickly drew widespread praise as an impressive innovation, and so far competitors such as Yahoo! have not offered anything similarly real-time. Some in the open-source community, however, have made an effort to duplicate the functionality for general use, and we may one day see many ordinary sites employing this type of interface. Suggest Framework is an example of this effort.
It has been noted that Google attempts to avoid suggesting potentially offensive searches. For instance, there are no suggestions for porn, but there are for variations of the word. Interestingly, other words, like lesbian are also on this list, while various profanities and racial slurs are not.
See also WikiWax, a comparable service from SurfWax Inc. that searches Wikipedia articles.
See also Questsin, a blog explaining how Google Suggest Works as an algorithm including negative side effects of simple concatinating words together based on frequency of results.
University Search
Allows users to search within a large number of educational institution domains.
Video
- Main article: Google Video
On January 25, 2005, Google introduced a beta of Google Video, allowing users to search through television content based on title, network or a closed caption transcript. Users can then watch the videos, or in most cases see stills and transcripts of them.
Web Search
- Main article: Google
Google's most famous creation is the Google search engine. Google.com has indexed over 8 billion Web sites, has 200 million requests a day and is the largest search engine on the Internet. The search engine allows you to search through images, products (Froogle), news, and the usenet archive. It uses a proprietary system (including PageRank) to return the search results. A culture has grown around the very popular search engine, and to google has come to mean, "to search for something on Google."
X
- Main article: Google X
Google X was a project released by Google Labs on March 15, 2005 and rescinded a day later. It consisted of the traditional Google search bar, but it was made to look like the Dock user interface feature of Apple's Mac OS X operating system. Rumors say the project was discontinued because Google feared legal retribution from the notoriously litigious Apple.
Features
Calculator
Examples (the link texts are what is entered as if it were a search string):
- 12*13
- 0x23 in decimal (or shorter: 0+0x23)
- 40 in hexadecimal
- (1+i)*(2+i)
- 212 F in C
- 1.21 gigawatts / 88 mph
- the speed of light in miles / s
- days in a year
- two plus two
- Astronomical Unit / the speed of light
- the answer to life, the universe, and everything (see The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything)
Currency Conversion
Examples (the link texts are what is entered as if it were a search string):
- 1.5 LTL in EUR
- 100 Chilean peso in Brazilian real
- 2 German money per liter in British currency per Imperial pint
Definitions
Enables users to have a word or string (phrase) defined from definitions found in online references (including wiki sites). Explanation
Hurricane Katrina
On September 12 2005, Google added two new search features designed specificially for finding information about Hurricane Katrina's aftermath. The first is Katrina People Search that can helps you search multiple databases for information on friends and family affected by the hurricane. The second feature is a Special Index Search on Katrina related pages.
Movies
Allows users in the USA to search for info about movies using the main Google search interface. You can search in various ways:
- Entering "movie: 10001" in the Google "search text" entry field will search for all movies being shown in and around United States zipcode 10001- sorted by movie theater. Within the listing you can see showtimes, the average rating for each movie, as well as links to all reviews, and a link to the IMDB page for that movie.
- Entering "movie: movies 10001" provides a listing sorted by movie, showing all locations and showtimes where each movie is shown in the area.
- Entering "movie: Julia Roberts" provides a listing sorted by movie, of many of the movies starring this actor/actress. It is unclear what rules/algorithm is used for including/excluding certain movies.
PhoneBook
This search feature is built into Google's standard search bar; if the search terms match certain criteria, an option to view search results of Google's telephone directory archive is provided. One can search both residential and business listings. There is also an option available to remove one's phone book entry from Google.
Tools
Blogger
- Main article: Blogger
In 2003, Google acquired the Pyra Labs and Blogger services. Formerly premium features that needed to be paid for were made available for free by Google. The tool, Blogger, is a service to make weblog publishing easier. The user does not have to write any code or worry about installing server software or scripts. Nevertheless, the user can influence the design of their blog freely.
Code
Google Code is Google's site for developers interested in Google-related development. The site contains Open Source code and lists of their API services.
Gmail
- Main article: Gmail
On April 1, 2004, Google announced its own free webmail service, Gmail, which would provide users with 1000 MB (actually 1 GB, or 1024 MB) of storage for their mailboxes and would generate revenue by displaying advertisements from the AdWords service based on words in users email messages. Owing to April Fool's Day, however, the company's press release was greeted with much skepticism in the technology world. Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's vice-president of products, re-assured BBC News by saying "We are very serious about Gmail."
When Gmail was announced, the storage space available was vastly more than that of most other free webmail providers—for example, Microsoft's Hotmail only offered 2 MB, and Yahoo!'s Mail service offered 4 MB. (In response to Gmail, Yahoo's limits have been upgraded to 250 MB and then again, to 1 GB for their free accounts, and 2 GB for their premium account; Hotmail's limits are being upgraded to 250MB.) There has been a great deal of criticism regarding Gmail's privacy policy. Most of the criticism was over Google's plans to add context-sensitive advertisements to emails by automatically scanning them. Google continues to refute some of this criticism by pointing out that GMail is using mostly industry wide practices. [10]
On April 1, 2005 Google announced that they would begin constantly increasing mailbox size by approximately 1 MB every 75 seconds, with no plan to stop. This actually was an April Fool's joke, but the company did simultaneously announce that it was increasing mailbox size to 2 GB, with a promise to add more space in the future. They are continuously adding more space, much slower than during April 1. On their webpage, they show how much space they are currently providing. By April 11, Google was adding storage at approximately 3.5 MB each day.
Although Google's Gmail is still in beta testing, and not open to the general public, users who do have an account have 5 (new users) to 100 (older users) "Gmail invites" that they can send to others. The number of invites a person has regenerates over time.
Gmail is anticipated to go open to the general public in early 2006. Although Google has not yet set an official date for open admittance, any person in the United States with a cell phone capable of text messaging can now sign up without an invite from a current user at https://www.google.com/accounts/SmsMailSignup1.
Language Tools
This tool allows users to use Google in many different languages.
Google Reader
On October 7th 2005, Google launched Google Reader, a feed reader, or "news aggregator", capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds. Google Reader is accessed through a web browser and features an interface similar to Gmail. It allows you to subscribe to feeds by URL, import/export subscription lists using OPML, and search for new feeds. The service also embeds audio enclosures in the page.
Urchin
Google acquired Urchin on May 3, 2005. Urchin is a San Diego based web statistics company.
Web API
The Google Web API (or Google Web Services) is Google's public interface for registered developers. Using Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), a programmer can write services for search and data mining that rely on Google's results. Also, websurfers can view cached pages and make suggestions for better spelling.
By default a developer has a limit of 1,000 requests per day. This program is still in a beta phase. Google is one of the few search engines to make its results available via a public API; Technorati is another good example. Some popular implementations of the Google Web API include the alerting service Google Alerts, or FindForward, as well as the Google Dance Tool, which monitors when Google is spidering the Internet.
Downloads
Deskbar
In December 2003, Google launched the beta version of the Google Deskbar, a search tool which runs from the Microsoft Windows taskbar, without a browser having to be open. It can return film reviews, stock quotes, dictionary and thesaurus definitions, plus any pre-configured search of a third-party site (e.g. eBay or Amazon). In November 2004, Google launched an API for Google Deskbar.
August 22nd 2005 saw Google launch Version 2 Beta of their Desktop Search, with revamped features, and a new Sidebar mode which allows the use of various plugins.
Desktop
- Main article Google Desktop
Google Desktop enables desktop search. It runs locally on a PC and will index all Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape Mail, and Thunderbird emails, text documents, Microsoft Office documents, AOL Instant Messenger conversations, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, and Netscape history on that PC, PDF, music, images, video, and allow the user to search them from a browser.
Google Desktop 2 (beta) was released on August 22, 2005. The new feature that distinguishes Desktop 2 from Desktop is the addition of Sidebar which is placed on either side of your Windows desktop and can display real-time news, e-mail, photos, stocks, and weather, among others.
- Google desktop search website
Earth
- Main article: Google Earth
On June 28, 2005, Google made available Google Earth as a downloadable program for free. It uses Keyhole technology to allow customized use of Google Maps, with e.g. map images with town and street names overlaying satellite images. For some areas these overlays are available even though Google Maps by itself does not provide these.
Orkut
- Main article: orkut
Though not mentioned on the Google homepage, orkut is a service hosted, created and maintained by Google engineers. Orkut is a social networking service, where users can list their personal and professional information, create relationships amongst friends and join communities of mutual interest. Affinity engines, a company based in Palo Alto, has filed a lawsuit accusing that Orkut Büyükkökten, a co-founder of the company, illegally took the code, which he wrote for the company, for use in Google. [11]
There is some speculation saying that orkut and Gmail are part of a Google effort to gather information about their users, with the intention of offering a better personalized search service in future. Google already has a personalized search in Google Labs.
Picasa
- Main article: Picasa
On July 13, 2004 Google acquired Picasa, software for management and sharing of digital photographs. Since then, Google has released the latest edition of the software with Picasa2. The aim of the software was to make photo editing simple and easy to use. Picasa has also been integrated with Google's Blogger and Gmail services. It is free to download.
Hello
This add-on to Google's software Picasa gives the user the ability to instant message pictures and to surf the web in a shared form: two users instant messaging can surf the web together. It also allows a user to directly add pictures from Picasa to his/her blog on blogger. This is the first instant messaging download offered by Google.
Talk
- Main Article: Google Talk
On August 24, 2005, a beta version of Talk was released. It is an instant messaging service, utilizing the Jabber protocol. Talk also includes a voice over ip service.
Toolbar
Google Toolbar is a toolbar featuring a Google search bar, as well as other Google tools. As of July 2005, Google Toolbar is available for two browsers, four operating systems and in ten languages.
This addition to Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or later adds Google's searching capabilities in a toolbar in the web browser. The latest version includes pop-up ads blocking, automatic filling of forms, the ability to show the Google PageRank value for the current page being viewed, and spell checker, AutoLink and the Word Translator. It has been criticized for being a security risk because it updates itself without user intervention.
A separately downloadable add-on for the toolbar allows participation in Google Compute, a distributed computing project to help scientific research.
Other browsers, such as Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari, have built-in search tools that offer the same functionality. Recently, Google also launched a new version of the toolbar, "Google Toolbar for Firefox", which functions similarly to its Internet Explorer counterpart, except it has exclusive Firefox-only features. There is also the well established Googlebar project, which although unofficial and not developed by Google directly offers very similar functionality to the official Google Toolbar.
Web Accelerator
- Main article: Google Web Accelerator
On May 3, 2005, Google launched a downloadable web accelerator known as Google Web Accelerator. It can be integrated into Mozilla Firefox (taking the form of two new toolbar items) and Microsoft Internet Explorer (taking the form of a new toolbar), but it is also usable in a limited capacity with any web browser simply by setting the browser's proxy server to localhost:9100. It speeds up web browsing through the use of this local proxy server, which sends requests to Google's Web Accelerator servers to help get a faster response. The data between the local proxy and the accelerator servers is compressed to decrease transfer time. The Google Web Accelerator also uses caching and prefetching. Prefetching can be disabled.
However, there was recent controversy over the Accelerator as some users found that their personal website cookies were being shared to other users. This meant that some users found pages such as forum control panels of other users containing personal information appearing and that is was possible to spoof post as those other users. Secure websites were unaffected as the Accelerator did not scan sites protected by https.
It is thought this was the reason that downloads of the Google Accelerator software were disabled, however there were also technical issues with it following links that could cancel or delete website data. The prefetching option would potentially prefetch links such as "delete" or "log out", causing data loss and access problems. Google's servers also quickly reached their maximum capacity due to the widespread use of Accelerator: this is the reason Google officially cited on the Accelerator website.
- Google Web Accelerator website
- The Register article on the Suspension of Google Accelerator
- GamesAreFun.com News - ALERT: Do NOT Use Google Web Accelerator!
- Google Web Accelerator: Hey, not so fast - an alert for web app designers - 37signals article on how to prevent precaching accelerators like Google's causing damage to administrative websites
Programs
AdSense
- Main article: AdSense
AdSense enables text or image advertisements to be displayed on Web sites that want ads to help raise money. The ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on a per-click basis. Google utilizes its search technology to serve ads based on Web site content, the user's geographical location, and other factors. Those wanting to advertise with Google's targeted ad system may sign up through AdWords.
AdWords
- Main article: AdWords
AdWords is a service that allows advertisers ads appear on any Google search page, Gmail email or AdSense page if certain keywords are displayed using a self-service system. The AdWords service is Google's largest source of income. The advertiser pays Google per click and there is a bidding system to determine ad ordering.
Hardware
Search Appliance
This is a hardware/software box that hooks into a corporate intranet. It may periodically crawl and index the intranet so as to allow employees to search up to 500,000 documents from the company's internal web pages and web-accessible documents using Google's familiar web search features. It can also be used to index corporate web sites.
Mini
Google also sells a smaller version of the search appliance called Google Mini, targeted towards small and medium companies. This works in a similar way, but can only search up to 100,000 documents.
