This is huge news, people. Welcome to the future of Google, lolol

Philipp, what sign-ups are there for Google Experimental? Are there going to be features beyond what they have on that page right now?

Philipp is on holiday Niraj. Tony wrote that article

The sign ups for Google Experimental will allow users to choose which of the experimental features they would like to see in their search results when logged into their account. Initially, you will only be able to choose from the four features listed on that page.

I have now received the update to all of my Google services, it was actually while I was doing a search. One thing I don't like about the new link bar, well one of the things is it's lack of integration with iGoogle themes.

http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/835/igooglejq0.png

The other issue with it is the fact that I would like to customise what I see, not what Google would like me to see.

It's also worth noting that I get Gmail (which it shouldn't be as i'm in the UK) as a link on the homepage bar, but on Google D&S it's simply Mail (and I don't get a link to the Google homepage, which I actually used).

Still quite some inconsistency, even if they are tailoring the links per service, the links should at least have the same name.

wow, this is the biggest update ever. Puts all the competition years behind.

outstanding job google

They just noticied that each time there was a "test interface" released to some users, it make a big buzz...

While I agree that this is a great step forward.

   Yahoo! links to main services at the top (Usually, Yahoo! homepage, My Yahoo! and Yahoo! Mail).

Live.com has a similar system (Click the Windows Logo on most Live.com sites and you get a list of the main Live products plus a link to others).

Google has really been the only large-scale service to not link to others services in such a fashion.

I can't quite get my head around how that big long "More products" list is very well designed. From a usability perspective, there are two many items on it for anyone to take focus. I think some kind of Central page (like an enhanced My Account page) would have been more suitable. It seems like whacking a big list of there is just the lazy man's way out.

Saying that, I think the rest of the searchology updates are pretty cool.

One thing though – you mentioned this Universal Search. Does this mean the likes of Blog Search and Book Search will lose their own pages, and be completely merged with the main Web Search? Or is there just more integration?

<< Does this mean the likes of Blog Search and Book Search will lose their own pages, and be completely merged with the main Web Search? >>

From what I saw and heard, that's unclear. I *think* for now it will just mean more integration so that you don't need to go looking for those pages.

Can anyone who was watching the webcast confirm that at all?

Although the Google Universal Search rollout is major news (Google is now the third search engine to embrace fully integrated search after AOL and A9), the Cross Language Information Retrieval will (in my opinion) prove to be a more far-reaching step forward. It almost promises to homogenize the Web on a linguistic level.

In fact, this is the first sign of a true semantic search capability on Google's part. It's a very bold move by Google.

wow.

<<Does this mean the likes of Blog Search and Book Search will lose their own pages, and be completely merged with the main Web Search?>>

No, of course not. The universal search means for now that some of the top results from Google's specialized search engines will make it into the main search.

<<
No, of course not. The universal search means for now that some of the top results from Google's specialized search engines will make it into the main search. >>

So, how is it different from OneBoxes, apart from the position on the page?

OneBox usually included the 3 top results. But now some of these specialized results become actual search results. They are ranked the same as web pages and I think this is very complex.

Ahh, I see =) that's quite cool

Yeah... my Gmail has these new links (:

This hasn't been implemented on my account yet. Wow, such cool news. I like the new focus on features instead of new products.

Its live for me now. This layout is pretty cool but I wish I could pick my 'more' list from the 'My Account' page with some type of preferences. That way I don't see 20 something links in the 'more' column.

Cross-language searching: This. wins. FOREVER. The entire conference could have just been this and I'd be talking about it for days.

New link bar: They are searching (pun intended) for a "sensible default" set of links that changes based on what you are doing. I agree that the super-long "more" list is a cop out, but I think the idea is that you shouldn't NEED it, if they are predicting your preferences properly. I say the link bar should adapt to what Google services a user frequents the MOST, and in what order. Maybe it already does that, or they're working on it.

Universal Search: They were ALWAYS going to do this. In a perfect Googly world, the home page would be the logo, the text box and "I'm feeling lucky". The choice bar should just stay there, though, instead of disappearing after I click on Images or Video. I shouldn't have to hit the back button to search a different Google service, especially since I don't have to if I use the TOP navigation bar. Inconsistent much?

Timeline and Map: neat, looking forward to when it becomes integrated into Universal Search.

Keyboard shortcuts: Now, please. kthxbye.

Right/left contextual navigation: YAY! USER DIRECTED SEARCH REFINEMENT! I personally agree with this kind of hand-holding, especially when Google's best guess isn't good enough. Way to keep up with the latest new engines.

Uh, that's it. Yay GOOG! Now fix the occasional brain farts in address lookup in Maps so I can stop using Live.

I think it's quite amazing that Ionut predicted the timeline and map views.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/05/new-ways-to-visualize-google-search.html

And brilliantly done to Google too: I think they're both going to be fantastically useful for certain types of query. School essay writers will be particularly thrilled. You just can't go wrong if you start your research with say [john keats view:timeline].

It's going to take years of small improvements to get it error free – try [tony blair view:timeline] and worry about what he was doing in 1812 – but hey, they'll get there. It's SO cool.

I didn't predict them. I saw some evidence about them in Google in Your Language.

That doesn't mean it wasn't brilliant :)

By the way, I'm not yet getting integrated Universal Search results for things like [nosferatu]. (I'm in the UK.) Though I'm looking forward to it. Presumably we're waiting for it to be rolled out to all datacenters?

I bet Philipp's looking forward to getting back from his holiday so he can play with all this stuff.

One thing I'm missing a link to now anywhere is Desktop (I don't understand why it isn't in the "more" list). I can only get at it by using the Google Toolbar.

I managed to see something using a proxy.

what the hell is this about

Now that the "main" results include video, maps, news, images etc, the choice bar really needs to replace "web" by two options: "web only" and "everything".

No, because the main results only include few results from video, maps, news, images. So it's web + some highlights from other search engines.

One thing I like very much about the new navigation is that I find I can do without the Google Toolbar, which I used mostly for navigation (getting to gmail, calendar etc), so now have more screen space. Yum.

That was quick. Look who's #1 for [google experimental]:
http://www.google.com/search?q=google+experimental

I'm not sure the Cross Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) initiative will directly benefit English language searchers as much as it will benefit searchers in other languages which have less content on the Web.

We as native English searchers should, of course, have the ability to utilize Google's translation services, but they did not say anything about intentionally conducting searches across other language document sets.

I know I would love to be able to search French and German scientific and literary documents, as well as Spanish documents. Presently, I have to use queries constructed in those languages. I can do okay with Spanish but I'm totally dependent upon translation tools for French and German queries.

How do you sign up for the experiments?

If I'm at the Google homepage. I search for something. Hit enter. Then I hit the back button. I can no longer hit the forward button. Why?

Update: This is only the case on personalized homepage not so with google.com

Not very innovative for the 10K number of engineers they now have. The old days of truly innovative products such as AdSense (Google's revenue), Gmail (amazing UI and launched Ajax) or Maps (understanding layering and that all the action is on the map, to be contrasted with Mapquest).

Looks like innovation at Google vanished with the IPO. Just see how slow they are to add some obvious features of IG (contrast with Netvibes). Someone must have envisionned IG, but others must be blindly executing it. Anyway these ideas are not impressive at all. Wow Google will now translate my queries to other languages and do the search. Wow that is so smart, I never thought about this! Obvisously Google seems to be lacking ideas on data visualisation to improve their search experience. Anyone feeling like working on a one week project that would take months to Google to create? If interested post your email.

<< Obvisously Google seems to be lacking ideas on data visualisation to improve their search experience. >>

I don't think so.

http://www.google.com/views?q=thomas+jefferson%20view%3Atimeline

Part of the problem google have in search is showing the innovation because many things they do under the hood. The innovation in universal search was not the UI or the idea of integrating different type of results. Instead, the innovation is correctly ranking and ordering the results among all the different types of text and media.

For example search for George W. Bush:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=george+W+bush&btnG=Search
You get news results as the first result, since G.W. Bush, the current US president is constantly in the news.

Now search for Ronald Reagan:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ronald+reagan&btnG=Search
The news results is the last result for him. Make sense, since most people would be looking for research info about him, not news.

Now, that's where the innovation is. And actually, it would be much easier for google to use a different type of data visualization to do this, than to figure out how to rank it in the regular results. Showing it in another type of visualization is actually a cop out for not being able to order correctly. Google is trying to solve the quality part, showing the correct answer first.

I'm still not getting universal search. All my searches are the same

Ionut, being able to refine search results thru date ranges is not very innovative.

Alex

which other search engine shows web results in a date range format. Sure for news, blogs it has been done, and even for archiving the history of web pages, but organizing web results by dates going back to the 19th century has never been done by any of the major search engine.

The fact that I can watch videos in the organic google results is just fabulous.

Alex K

I will give you that translating queries into other languages is not very "innovative". PEOPLE do it all the time. It's second nature to millions of multilingual web users

But you see, PEOPLE don't have to do it anymore. High quality, automated query translations put Google ahead of the game. Yes, the idea is obvious, but Google may get it right, first. Thus, they may claim all the innovation they want and millions of web surfers will thank them for it.

Including me, and I'm American.

or

Conceptually refining results with date ranges is cool but not innovative. Think about pagerank, the javascript in Gmail or the layering in Maps. These are conceptually innovative. The first one which consists of applying bibliometrics to the web made good use of the work people do thru linking. Next step will consist of making good use of the work people do when they bookmark (delicious, digg) or define/explain (wikipedia). In Gmail, putting aside the UI which is wonderfull (I fail to see such good UI in old google groups, google reader or google calendar (obviously not the same team)), was a statement: very interactive web applications are possible without the use of any additional plugins. And the last one inspired many many mashups which is a possible form of the semantic web (yahoo pipes).

J. McNair
I agree people already "manually" do it. I wait to see how well Google is gona make it happen, perhaps there will be innovation there.

Google's a corporation, a singular entity, an "it" and not a "they".

You're right, grammar. It's one of those bad grammar habits that I find hard to shake off. I'll try to remember for next time! :-)

BTW, what a coincidence that you're name is "grammar" and you're also a linguistic expert... ;-)

<< BTW, what a coincidence that you're name is "grammar" and you're also a linguistic expert... ;-) >>

Lol!

I would have said something too, if I had even noticed.

What is the FEFF image above the "blog" link all about?

Indeed, I'm excited to play around with all this new stuff when I return :)

> First of all, Google are updating their infrastructure and
> algorithms to integrate all their different search engines into
> one single Universal Search experience. To start with,
> this will include results from Book Search, Blog Search,
> Image Search, Local, News and Video.

Interesting – and possibly somehow related to Google's internal goals shown here last year (though this one talks about Google employee usage only):

<<Google wants to have an improved infrastructure to make their engineers more productive. This includes allowing employees to have a *universal search tool* “containing all public Google information searched on all Google searches.”>>
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-10-26-n80.html

From Google's explanation:

> See results on a timeline or map. With the timeline and map
> views, Google’s technology extracts key dates and locations
> from select search results so you can view the information in
> a different dimension.

Yet another piece in-tune with Google's company goals outlined in the document:

<<Another interesting feature foreshadowed in the Google papers was to grab relevant *locations & dates* from web pages allowing users to “view results on a timeline of map.”>>
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-10-26-n80.html

> Another announcement that could easily have gone unnoticed
> was that Google will soon be launching a way to search in
> one language and receive results from foreign language
> websites translated on the fly.

The first of many new services as a result of the improved Google machine translation efforts?

<<... they might enable you to search foreign languages in your native language. All translating would be done behind-the-scenes, so that when you search for “thus spoke”, you might as well get results which only contain “also sprach.”>>
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-05-22-n83.html

The archived webcast of the Searchology event is live now:

http://google.client.shareholder.com/visitors/event/build2/mediapresentation.cfm?MediaID=25550&Player=1

Take A look at that blog post about Future Of Google Search

http://www.squidoo.com/predictions