anandanjaria
Right off the assembly line
Source: *en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_services_and_tools
Services
Analytics
Main article: Google Analytics
Google Analytics was launched on November 18, 2005. It is a free service that generates detailed statistics about traffic to a website. Its main highlight is that webmasters can optimize their ad campaigns through Google Analytics' analysis of where visitors came from, how long they stayed on the website, and their geographical location. The homepage reads: "Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site." The service is based on the Urchin software that Google acquired when it took over Urchin Software Corporation.
*www.google.com/analytics/
Answers
After the failure of the Google Questions and Answers service from August 2001, Google launched a new service called Google Answers in April 2002. 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 not Google employees. They are limited in number (according to Google, there are only 500 Researchers) and are screened through an application process that tests their research and communications abilities.
Prices for questions range from $2 to $200; After a question is answered, Google keeps 25% of the payment, sends the rest to the Researchers. If a question has not been answered, the client will not pay the question's price. However, in addition to the question's price, determined by the client, Google also charges a non-refundable, $0.50 listing fee. Naturally, most questions in the $2-$5 price range do not receive an answer.
Once a question is answered, it remains available for anyone to browse and comment on for free.
Each question page has three parts:
The client's question, on which the Researcher can respond with a request for clarification
The answer, which may remain empty if the question hasn't been answered. Only a Researcher can post the answer. After the answer is posted, the client may communicate with the Researcher to ask for clarification on the answer; the client can also rate the answer and may tip the Researcher.
The comment section, where any registered user, Researchers and non-Researchers alike, can comment on the question. Some questions are "answered" in comments. Naturally, this section, too, could be left empty, if no comments have been posted.
Researchers with low ratings can be fired, encouraging eloquence and accuracy. Also, Google states that people who comment may be selected to become researchers, therefore inspiring high quality comments. This service came out of beta in May 2003 and currently receives more than one hundred question postings per day. For a Researcher, a question is answered by logging into a special researchers page and then "locking" a question they want to answer. This act of "locking" claims the question for that researcher.
*answers.google.com/answers/
Base
Main article: Google Base
Google Base was officially launched in beta on November 16, 2005, but was already alive earlier for brief amounts of time. Its homepage read: "Google Base is Google's database into which you can add all types of content. We'll host your content and make it searchable online for free." The official statement from Google Inc at this time, as posted on Google Blog on Nov. 16, 2005, is: Today we're excited to announce Google Base, an extension of our existing content collection efforts like web crawl, Google Sitemaps, Google Print and Google Video. Google Base enables content owners to easily make their information searchable online. Anyone, from large companies to website owners and individuals, can use it to submit their content in the form of data items. We'll host the items and make them searchable for free.
Google Base enables content owners to give a structure to their information and make it easily searchable online, it can be related in its principle to a simplified Semantic Web, information is described using labels and attributes.
*base.google.com/
Blog Search
On September 14 2005, Google launched Blog Search. It is Google search technology focused on blogs. Results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger. Blog Search's blog index is continually updated. Blogs written in English can be searched, as well as those written in other languages, including French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese.
There are different ways you can get to Blog Search:
*blogsearch.google.com/
blogsearch.google.com
search.blogger.com
Bookmarks
A free online bookmark storage service available to Google Account holders. This service organizes bookmarks with labels and bookmarks labeled homepage will be displayed on your Personalized Homepage. Web address *www.google.com/bookmarks.
Book Search
Formerly Google Print
At the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004, Google introduced its Google Print service, now known as Google Book Search. This tool searches the full text of books that Google scans and stores in its digital database. When relevant to a user's keyword search, up to three results from the Google Book Search index are displayed above search results in the Google Web Search service (google.com). Or, a user may search just for books at the dedicated Google Book Search service. [1] Clicking a result from Google Book Search opens an interface in which the user may view pages from the book as well as content-related advertisements and links to the publisher's website and booksellers. Through a variety access limitations and security measures, some based on user-tracking, Google limits the number of viewable pages and prohibits page printing and text copying. [2].
As of December 2005, the Google Book Search service remains in a beta stage but the underlying database continues to grow, with more than a hundred thousand titles added by publishers and authors and some 10,000 works in the public domain now indexed and included in search results. A similar service, known as Search Inside the Book, is offered by Amazon.com's A9.com.
In December 2004, Google signaled an extension to its Google Print initiative known as the Google Print Library Project. [3] Google announced partnerships 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 digitize and make available through its Google Book Search service approximately 15 million volumes within a decade. The announcement soon triggered controversy, as publisher and author associations challenged Google's plans to digitize, not just books in the public domain, but also titles still under copyright. Google's Library Project later spurred a group led by Yahoo!, called the Open Content Alliance.
On November 17, 2005, Google changed the name of this service from Google Print to Google Book Search. [4] Its program enabling publishers and authors to include their books in the service was renamed Google Books Partner Program and the partnership with libraries became Google Books Library Project.
Google Book Search remains controversial. While many hail the initiative for its potential to offer unprecedented access to what may become the largest online corpus of human knowledge, the publishing industry and writers' groups decry the project as a wholesale rights-grab. The Authors Guild of America and Association of American Publishers have individually sued Google, citing 'massive copyright infringement'.
*books.google.com/
Calendar
Google Calendar is a free online calendar service from google similar to the one offered by Yahoo! or MSN. It was started on April 13, 2006. Google Calendar offers compatibility with Microsoft Outlook Express, the Palm Treo smartphone and to various other mobile phone calendars in coming months.
The Google Calendar allows users to store different events in the calendar and share a part of it with friends or with general public. It is quite similar to the Yahoo Calendar which was introduced in 1998. However, Yahoo Calendar does not have the capability for sharing events, and has remained more or less the same since its inception.
The most important feature of Google Calendar is the use of natural language processing to simplfy how events are entered. The feature allows users to type simple commands such as, "leave work today at 5 p.m.," or, "drinks Thursday with Elinor," that the system can interpret and automatically insert into the calendar. Events can be private, shared with friends, or made public on the Web.
Google Calendar users can search for events in a search bar by typing in keywords, events, or people's names. Events also can be quickly created by typing in simple messages with a day of the week and the item is automatically generated.
In addition, users can create event invitations to be sent to anyone with an email address, send reminders via email or mobile phone text messages, and keep track of RSVPs from within the program. People can see their schedules by day, week, month and four-day views, highlight any period from a monthly calendar for a customized view, and display only certain events at a time on their calendar view.
*www.google.com/calendar
Catalogs
As of December 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.
*catalogs.google.com/
Directory
Google Directory launched April 2000. 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 source of the directory, and its categorization is from the Open Directory Project (ODP). The ODP publishes an easily parsed version of its database in Resource Description Framework (RDF) format for other sites, like Google, to use for derivative directories. The Websites in the Google Directory are sorted by PageRank.
*directory.google.com/
Finance
On March 21, 2006, Google launched Finance beta. [6] It features the latest business and enterprise headlines through Google News interactive stock market graphs and other statistics.
*finance.google.com/finance
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.
*finance.google.com/finance
Gmail
Main article: Gmail
Gmail is a free webmail and POP e-mail service, currently in beta testing, from Google, Inc. It is known as Google Mail in the United Kingdom and Germany. Its competitors include Hotmail, AIM Mail, and Yahoo! Mail.
Gmail was initially released on April 1, 2004. Since Gmail is still in "beta", access to the service is restricted to those who had received an invitation from an existing account holder, from Blogger, or through their mobile phone. Some believe Gmail will continue to be invitation-only even after the beta phase in order to reduce the risk of spam.
While Gmail is not entirely open to the general public yet, most Gmail users have many invites to spare, as Google gives most users one hundred free invitations (and frequently replenishes them, as a reward for users who frequently check their Gmail accounts). [1] Gmail invites are also given away at random through Google's home page, and it is also possible to sign up if one has a mobile phone from Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, New Zealand, Phillipines or the United States via SMS Signup (see Beta testing phase) or a .edu e-mail address from an accredited U.S. institution[2]. One can find free Gmail invites at various Web sites, such as the ones shown under External links or even for sale at online auctions. However, Google has prohibited the sale of Gmail addresses.
The service is notable for providing over 2.7 (and counting) gigabytes (as of 20 March 2006) of storage space (increased from the original limit of 1000 megabytes). This change was announced on April Fool's Day 2005, and was made for the one-year anniversary of Gmail. The announcement was accompanied by a statement that Google would continue to increase storage until they reached the theoretical limit (infinity gigabytes) then give each user one more. All Google will say about this now is that it will keep increasing by the second as long as they have enough space on their servers. Gmail makes intensive use of modern browser features such as JavaScript and keyboard access keys, allowing for a richer user experience, while retaining the benefits of a web application (most importantly, immediate availability of the service on any computer with a supported browser: Internet Explorer 5.5+, Mozilla Application Suite 1.4+, Firefox 0.8+, Safari 1.2.2+, Netscape 7.1+, or the Opera browser). Gmail also offers "Basic HTML view" to allow users to access the Gmail messages from almost any computer running browsers that do not fully support the more advanced features.
There has been some criticism about Gmail's information and privacy policies. Much of it stems from phrases in Gmail's Privacy Policy which state that Gmail will keep all e-mail for "some time" even if it has been deleted or the account terminated and that Gmail will disclose personal information (including the actual text of e-mails) if it has a "good faith belief" that such a disclosure is necessary for various reasons such as the very vague "protect the rights, property or safety of ... the public."[3]
Another unresolved issue discussed among privacy advocates is the lack of disclosed data retention and correlation policies. More than 30 privacy and civil rights organizations have urged Google to suspend Gmail service until these issues are resolved [4].
Newest from Gmail is a Chat feature, that alows Gmail users to Chat with other Gmail or Google talk users.
http:/?www.gmail.com
Groups
Main article: Google 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 domains *www.google.ca and *www.google.co.uk, and, according to the (non-official) google.public.support.general FAQ, until July 28, 2005 on some other sites; it is currently unavailable on all Google Groups sites.
*groups.google.com/
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.
*images.google.com/
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.
*labs.google.com/
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. On November 7, 2005 Google launched Google Local for mobile, a free service that combines directions, maps and satellite imagery and it should work with most Java-enabled (J2ME) mobile phones.
*local.google.com/
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. 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 include the whole world in June 2005, also in June of 2005 the Google Maps API was released.
*maps.google.com/
Mars
Main article: Google Mars
On March 13, 2006, Google added imagery of Mars to its Google Maps interface. This coincided with the anniversary of the birth of astronomer Percival Lowell.
*www.google.com/mars/
Mobile
Allows users to search using Google from wireless devices such as mobile phone and PDAs.
*www.google.com/mobile/
Moon
Main article: Google Moon
On July 20, 2005, in honor of the first manned Moon landing on the July 20, 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 of swiss cheese."
*moon.google.com/
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. The service is integrated with Google Search History. On the 23 January 2006 Google News graduated from beta to become a fully fledged Google service.
*news.google.com/
Page Creator
Main article: Google Page Creator
Google introduced a beta release of a web-publishing program which creates pages and hosts them on Google's servers.
The URL given to members is *username.googlepages.com/
*pages.google.com
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, although these accounts are distinct from Gmail and do not require invitation. 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".
*www.google.com/ig
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.
*www.google.com/psearch
Scholar
In November 2004, Google released Google Scholar, a search engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and scholarly fields. Today, the index includes virtually all peer-reviewed journals available online, except those published by Elsevier, the world's largest scientific publisher. Comparable in function to Elsevier's Scopus and Thomson ISI's subscription-based Web of Science service, though more inclusive in sources and languages, Google Scholar is the world's largest index of the "Deep Web" or content that is only available to entitled users.
Results in Google Scholar are ranked by "relevance", which is based largely on the number of times the scholarly works have been cited in other works and in this sense is similar to PageRank. The relevance ranking is biased towards older works rather than up-to-date works which have had less time to be cited. Google Scholar appears to be strongly based on the ideas behind Citeseer, as described in the paper Digital Libraries and Autonomous Citation Indexing [7]. "Stand on the shoulders of giants" appears as a motto on the Google scholar main page.
During early 2005, Google Scholar was enhanced by the first attempt by a search engine to directly link its users to online resources at research libraries. Initially known as the Institutional Access Pilot, now Library Links, the service enables institutional users, primarily at major academic libraries, to identify their institutional affiliation and thereby receive customized search results that link to their institution's link resolver, thus ensuring they receive access to a document's full text.
www.google.com/psearch
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 queries made to Google Images and Google News. Recently, Google expanded Search History with a new feature, dubbed Trends, that allows users to view detailed statistics based on the data in their search history.
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.
*www.google.com/options/specialsearches.html
SMS
Main article: Google SMS
Google SMS (Short Message Service) allows users to send text message queries on mobile phone devices in order to easily get answers to questions. The answers appear in a text format and includes things such as stock quotes, movie listings, and driving directions.
*www.google.com/sms/
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. The term Ajax has come into widespread use to describe the technology used in Google Suggest. 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.
See also SurfWax News Accumulator and LookAhead(tm), pioneering query refinement services from SurfWax Inc. (see SearchEngineWatch) that use a proprietary Ajax framework and were launched January 2004. See also SurfWax RSS Search to scan RSS articles by Title using LookAhead technology.
See also WikiWax, another comparable service from SurfWax Inc. that searches Wikipedia articles. A similar service is provided by LuMriX.
See also Questsin, a blog explaining how Google Suggest Works as an algorithm including negative side effects of simple concatenating words together based on frequency of results.
*labs.google.com/suggest
Transit Trip Planner
Currently in Google Labs, the Google Transit Trip Planner was released on December 7, 2005 ([10]). Google Transit's goal is to provide local trip planning (eg, using the local buses and rail system) in a simplistic manner, all on one page. Utilizing the Google Maps interface, transit shows a picture of your route with detailed directions.
Google Transit currently works only in the Portland, Oregon area but will be expanded soon.
*www.google.com/transit
Translate
A translation service launched in May 2001 by Google, see Google Translate
University Search
Allows users to search within a large number of educational institution domains.
*www.google.com/options/universities.html
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. Google signed agreements with CBS and the NBA to offer some programs online.
Web Search
Main article: Google search
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. Google X was down for a short time but appears to been offially relaunched via their blogspot blog. Google X
Rumors say the project was discontinued because Google feared legal retribution from Apple.
Calculator
Explanation:
*www.google.com/help/calculator.html Google Calculator Help
*www.googleguide.com/calculator.html GoogleGuide calculator
Examples (the link texts are what is entered as if it were a search string):
12*13
0x23 in decimal
40 in hexadecimal
(1+i)*(2+i)
212 F in C
1.21 gigawatts / 88 mph
the speed of light in miles / s
the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight
the speed of light in knots
the speed of light in light years per year
days in a year
two plus two
au/c (Astronomical Unit / the speed of light)
m_earth (with underscore)
r_earth (with underscore)
G
1-0.9-0.1 = −2.77555756 × 10−17 (floating point math error)[11] (Fixed as of 00:34, 6 February 2006 (UTC))
kibibyte in bytes
kbit/s in bit/s = 1,024 bit/second (binary prefix error - kbit/s always means 1000 bit/s, unlike kilobyte, which is ambiguous)
the answer to life, the universe, and everything (see The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything)
[edit]
Currency Conversion
Explanation
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 Euros per liter in British pounds per Imperial pint
Definitions
Enables users to have a word or string (phrase) defined from definitions found in online references (including wiki sites). Explanation
Definition of cat.
Definition of Purple Rain.
Definition of George Washington.
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.
Official Google Hurricane Katrina search tools (Redirects to main search page as of 00:37, 6 February 2006 (UTC))
Music
"Google Music" is a service launched on December 15, 2005. The new service is not going to be a music library, such as Yahoo's. The service will search libraries of legal download services and will provide links to the partners, as well as lyrics and biographies of the artist. Initial merchant partners include Apple Computer's iTunes service, RealNetworks's Rhapsody, eMusic and Amazon.com, and WalMart.com, Google said. Google also said that this does not represent Google moving to be an online music retailer. The way the service is used is by simply typing in the name of a popular band and searching from the standard home page, the engine will return specialized results at the top of the results similar to "Google AdSense".
Movies
Allows users in the USA and Canada 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.
Weather
Allows users in the USA to get a four-day forecast for a particular U.S. locations using the main Google search interface.
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 have been upgraded to 250 MB for their free accounts, and 2 GB for their premium account.) 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. [12]
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 Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Turkey, and the United States with a cell phone capable of text messaging can now sign up without an invite from a current user at *www.google.com/accounts/SmsMailSignup1.
On February 7, 2006, Google announced they are currently adding Google Talk support into Gmail. This allows you to send instant messages to other talk users directly from your Gmail inbox. Many users already have access to this update and the integration is slowly being rolled over for those who don't.
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 alleging that their co-founder Orkut Büyükkökten illegally re-used Affinity Engines software code when he moved to Google. [13]
Language Tools
This tool allows users to translate text or web pages from one language to another. It also allows searching in web pages located in a specific country or written in a specific language.
Google Reader
Main article: 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. To add a "Add to Google Reader" Button with 1-click subscriptions to your webpage visit the link below.
Google Sitemaps
Main article: Google Sitemaps
In June 2005 Google released the Google Sitemaps tool into beta testing. Google Sitemaps allows Webmasters to generate a file that lists the URLs on the site in order for better indexing of the website. Google makes no promises about increasing PageRank with this tool, but it allows the Webmaster to get some feedback on the URLs that Google is searching.
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.
Writely
Main article: Writely
On March 9, 2006, Google acquired Upstartle, the maker of online word-processor Writely. It is still in beta and is not available to new users as of yet.
Downloads
Google Pack
Main article: Google Pack
Google Pack, announced at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show on 6 January 2006, bundles Google (Google Earth, Google Talk, Google Desktop, etc.) and non-Google software (such as Adobe Reader, Norton Antivirus and Trillian) into a single setup.
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.
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.
On November 3, 2005, Google "graduated" Desktop from beta. ([14])
Earth
Main article: Google Earth
Screenshot from 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.
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
Main article: Hello (application)
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.
On February 7, 2006, Google announced they are currently adding Talk support into Gmail. This allows you to send instant messages to other talk users directly from your gmail inbox. Many users already have access to this update and the integration is slowly being rolled over for those who don't.
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 allowed participation in Google Compute, a distributed computing project to help scientific research. This add-on is currently not available.
Other browsers, such as Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari, have built-in search tools that offer the same functionality. Google also has a 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 extension, which although not developed by Google directly offers very similar functionality to the official Google Toolbar.
In January 2006, Google released the beta version of its new toolbar, Google Toolbar Beta, for Windows XP/2000 and IE 6.0+ which allows users to get instant search suggestions; share web pages with friends; enjoy the Toolbar's pop-up blocker, web form filler, and spellchecker; add bookmarks; and add custom buttons. Google Custom Button Gallery
Then, in April 2006, Google released Google Toolbar 2 for Firefox for Windows XP/2000, Mac OS X, or Red Hat Linux and Firefox 1.0+. Additions included an "enhanced search box" and a new "safe browsing" anti-phishing feature. [15]
Toolbar trivia
The about dialog box for Google Toolbar has the Latin words "de parvis grandis acervus erit". Which can be translated as "From the small things there will arise plenty of great ones." Ovid, in Remedia Amoris used a similar phrase "de multis grandis acervus erit", translated as "Out of many things a great heap will be formed."
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 it 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.
It should be also mentioned that some have downloaded google's web accelerator and have noticed it only SLOWED DOWN their webpage load time, this was noted especially among comcast.net broadband internet users.
Google Web Accelerator is again available for download...
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
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 an advertiser's ads to 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.
Search Appliance
Main article: Google 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 15,000,000 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
Main article: Google 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 is restricted to less documents. From 50,000 up to a maximum of 300,000.
Retrieved from "*en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_services_and_tools"
Services
Analytics
Main article: Google Analytics
Google Analytics was launched on November 18, 2005. It is a free service that generates detailed statistics about traffic to a website. Its main highlight is that webmasters can optimize their ad campaigns through Google Analytics' analysis of where visitors came from, how long they stayed on the website, and their geographical location. The homepage reads: "Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site." The service is based on the Urchin software that Google acquired when it took over Urchin Software Corporation.
*www.google.com/analytics/
Answers
After the failure of the Google Questions and Answers service from August 2001, Google launched a new service called Google Answers in April 2002. 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 not Google employees. They are limited in number (according to Google, there are only 500 Researchers) and are screened through an application process that tests their research and communications abilities.
Prices for questions range from $2 to $200; After a question is answered, Google keeps 25% of the payment, sends the rest to the Researchers. If a question has not been answered, the client will not pay the question's price. However, in addition to the question's price, determined by the client, Google also charges a non-refundable, $0.50 listing fee. Naturally, most questions in the $2-$5 price range do not receive an answer.
Once a question is answered, it remains available for anyone to browse and comment on for free.
Each question page has three parts:
The client's question, on which the Researcher can respond with a request for clarification
The answer, which may remain empty if the question hasn't been answered. Only a Researcher can post the answer. After the answer is posted, the client may communicate with the Researcher to ask for clarification on the answer; the client can also rate the answer and may tip the Researcher.
The comment section, where any registered user, Researchers and non-Researchers alike, can comment on the question. Some questions are "answered" in comments. Naturally, this section, too, could be left empty, if no comments have been posted.
Researchers with low ratings can be fired, encouraging eloquence and accuracy. Also, Google states that people who comment may be selected to become researchers, therefore inspiring high quality comments. This service came out of beta in May 2003 and currently receives more than one hundred question postings per day. For a Researcher, a question is answered by logging into a special researchers page and then "locking" a question they want to answer. This act of "locking" claims the question for that researcher.
*answers.google.com/answers/
Base
Main article: Google Base
Google Base was officially launched in beta on November 16, 2005, but was already alive earlier for brief amounts of time. Its homepage read: "Google Base is Google's database into which you can add all types of content. We'll host your content and make it searchable online for free." The official statement from Google Inc at this time, as posted on Google Blog on Nov. 16, 2005, is: Today we're excited to announce Google Base, an extension of our existing content collection efforts like web crawl, Google Sitemaps, Google Print and Google Video. Google Base enables content owners to easily make their information searchable online. Anyone, from large companies to website owners and individuals, can use it to submit their content in the form of data items. We'll host the items and make them searchable for free.
Google Base enables content owners to give a structure to their information and make it easily searchable online, it can be related in its principle to a simplified Semantic Web, information is described using labels and attributes.
*base.google.com/
Blog Search
On September 14 2005, Google launched Blog Search. It is Google search technology focused on blogs. Results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger. Blog Search's blog index is continually updated. Blogs written in English can be searched, as well as those written in other languages, including French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese.
There are different ways you can get to Blog Search:
*blogsearch.google.com/
blogsearch.google.com
search.blogger.com
Bookmarks
A free online bookmark storage service available to Google Account holders. This service organizes bookmarks with labels and bookmarks labeled homepage will be displayed on your Personalized Homepage. Web address *www.google.com/bookmarks.
Book Search
Formerly Google Print
At the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004, Google introduced its Google Print service, now known as Google Book Search. This tool searches the full text of books that Google scans and stores in its digital database. When relevant to a user's keyword search, up to three results from the Google Book Search index are displayed above search results in the Google Web Search service (google.com). Or, a user may search just for books at the dedicated Google Book Search service. [1] Clicking a result from Google Book Search opens an interface in which the user may view pages from the book as well as content-related advertisements and links to the publisher's website and booksellers. Through a variety access limitations and security measures, some based on user-tracking, Google limits the number of viewable pages and prohibits page printing and text copying. [2].
As of December 2005, the Google Book Search service remains in a beta stage but the underlying database continues to grow, with more than a hundred thousand titles added by publishers and authors and some 10,000 works in the public domain now indexed and included in search results. A similar service, known as Search Inside the Book, is offered by Amazon.com's A9.com.
In December 2004, Google signaled an extension to its Google Print initiative known as the Google Print Library Project. [3] Google announced partnerships 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 digitize and make available through its Google Book Search service approximately 15 million volumes within a decade. The announcement soon triggered controversy, as publisher and author associations challenged Google's plans to digitize, not just books in the public domain, but also titles still under copyright. Google's Library Project later spurred a group led by Yahoo!, called the Open Content Alliance.
On November 17, 2005, Google changed the name of this service from Google Print to Google Book Search. [4] Its program enabling publishers and authors to include their books in the service was renamed Google Books Partner Program and the partnership with libraries became Google Books Library Project.
Google Book Search remains controversial. While many hail the initiative for its potential to offer unprecedented access to what may become the largest online corpus of human knowledge, the publishing industry and writers' groups decry the project as a wholesale rights-grab. The Authors Guild of America and Association of American Publishers have individually sued Google, citing 'massive copyright infringement'.
*books.google.com/
Calendar
Google Calendar is a free online calendar service from google similar to the one offered by Yahoo! or MSN. It was started on April 13, 2006. Google Calendar offers compatibility with Microsoft Outlook Express, the Palm Treo smartphone and to various other mobile phone calendars in coming months.
The Google Calendar allows users to store different events in the calendar and share a part of it with friends or with general public. It is quite similar to the Yahoo Calendar which was introduced in 1998. However, Yahoo Calendar does not have the capability for sharing events, and has remained more or less the same since its inception.
The most important feature of Google Calendar is the use of natural language processing to simplfy how events are entered. The feature allows users to type simple commands such as, "leave work today at 5 p.m.," or, "drinks Thursday with Elinor," that the system can interpret and automatically insert into the calendar. Events can be private, shared with friends, or made public on the Web.
Google Calendar users can search for events in a search bar by typing in keywords, events, or people's names. Events also can be quickly created by typing in simple messages with a day of the week and the item is automatically generated.
In addition, users can create event invitations to be sent to anyone with an email address, send reminders via email or mobile phone text messages, and keep track of RSVPs from within the program. People can see their schedules by day, week, month and four-day views, highlight any period from a monthly calendar for a customized view, and display only certain events at a time on their calendar view.
*www.google.com/calendar
Catalogs
As of December 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.
*catalogs.google.com/
Directory
Google Directory launched April 2000. 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 source of the directory, and its categorization is from the Open Directory Project (ODP). The ODP publishes an easily parsed version of its database in Resource Description Framework (RDF) format for other sites, like Google, to use for derivative directories. The Websites in the Google Directory are sorted by PageRank.
*directory.google.com/
Finance
On March 21, 2006, Google launched Finance beta. [6] It features the latest business and enterprise headlines through Google News interactive stock market graphs and other statistics.
*finance.google.com/finance
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.
*finance.google.com/finance
Gmail
Main article: Gmail
Gmail is a free webmail and POP e-mail service, currently in beta testing, from Google, Inc. It is known as Google Mail in the United Kingdom and Germany. Its competitors include Hotmail, AIM Mail, and Yahoo! Mail.
Gmail was initially released on April 1, 2004. Since Gmail is still in "beta", access to the service is restricted to those who had received an invitation from an existing account holder, from Blogger, or through their mobile phone. Some believe Gmail will continue to be invitation-only even after the beta phase in order to reduce the risk of spam.
While Gmail is not entirely open to the general public yet, most Gmail users have many invites to spare, as Google gives most users one hundred free invitations (and frequently replenishes them, as a reward for users who frequently check their Gmail accounts). [1] Gmail invites are also given away at random through Google's home page, and it is also possible to sign up if one has a mobile phone from Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, New Zealand, Phillipines or the United States via SMS Signup (see Beta testing phase) or a .edu e-mail address from an accredited U.S. institution[2]. One can find free Gmail invites at various Web sites, such as the ones shown under External links or even for sale at online auctions. However, Google has prohibited the sale of Gmail addresses.
The service is notable for providing over 2.7 (and counting) gigabytes (as of 20 March 2006) of storage space (increased from the original limit of 1000 megabytes). This change was announced on April Fool's Day 2005, and was made for the one-year anniversary of Gmail. The announcement was accompanied by a statement that Google would continue to increase storage until they reached the theoretical limit (infinity gigabytes) then give each user one more. All Google will say about this now is that it will keep increasing by the second as long as they have enough space on their servers. Gmail makes intensive use of modern browser features such as JavaScript and keyboard access keys, allowing for a richer user experience, while retaining the benefits of a web application (most importantly, immediate availability of the service on any computer with a supported browser: Internet Explorer 5.5+, Mozilla Application Suite 1.4+, Firefox 0.8+, Safari 1.2.2+, Netscape 7.1+, or the Opera browser). Gmail also offers "Basic HTML view" to allow users to access the Gmail messages from almost any computer running browsers that do not fully support the more advanced features.
There has been some criticism about Gmail's information and privacy policies. Much of it stems from phrases in Gmail's Privacy Policy which state that Gmail will keep all e-mail for "some time" even if it has been deleted or the account terminated and that Gmail will disclose personal information (including the actual text of e-mails) if it has a "good faith belief" that such a disclosure is necessary for various reasons such as the very vague "protect the rights, property or safety of ... the public."[3]
Another unresolved issue discussed among privacy advocates is the lack of disclosed data retention and correlation policies. More than 30 privacy and civil rights organizations have urged Google to suspend Gmail service until these issues are resolved [4].
Newest from Gmail is a Chat feature, that alows Gmail users to Chat with other Gmail or Google talk users.
http:/?www.gmail.com
Groups
Main article: Google 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 domains *www.google.ca and *www.google.co.uk, and, according to the (non-official) google.public.support.general FAQ, until July 28, 2005 on some other sites; it is currently unavailable on all Google Groups sites.
*groups.google.com/
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.
*images.google.com/
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.
*labs.google.com/
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. On November 7, 2005 Google launched Google Local for mobile, a free service that combines directions, maps and satellite imagery and it should work with most Java-enabled (J2ME) mobile phones.
*local.google.com/
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. 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 include the whole world in June 2005, also in June of 2005 the Google Maps API was released.
*maps.google.com/
Mars
Main article: Google Mars
On March 13, 2006, Google added imagery of Mars to its Google Maps interface. This coincided with the anniversary of the birth of astronomer Percival Lowell.
*www.google.com/mars/
Mobile
Allows users to search using Google from wireless devices such as mobile phone and PDAs.
*www.google.com/mobile/
Moon
Main article: Google Moon
On July 20, 2005, in honor of the first manned Moon landing on the July 20, 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 of swiss cheese."
*moon.google.com/
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. The service is integrated with Google Search History. On the 23 January 2006 Google News graduated from beta to become a fully fledged Google service.
*news.google.com/
Page Creator
Main article: Google Page Creator
Google introduced a beta release of a web-publishing program which creates pages and hosts them on Google's servers.
The URL given to members is *username.googlepages.com/
*pages.google.com
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, although these accounts are distinct from Gmail and do not require invitation. 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".
*www.google.com/ig
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.
*www.google.com/psearch
Scholar
In November 2004, Google released Google Scholar, a search engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and scholarly fields. Today, the index includes virtually all peer-reviewed journals available online, except those published by Elsevier, the world's largest scientific publisher. Comparable in function to Elsevier's Scopus and Thomson ISI's subscription-based Web of Science service, though more inclusive in sources and languages, Google Scholar is the world's largest index of the "Deep Web" or content that is only available to entitled users.
Results in Google Scholar are ranked by "relevance", which is based largely on the number of times the scholarly works have been cited in other works and in this sense is similar to PageRank. The relevance ranking is biased towards older works rather than up-to-date works which have had less time to be cited. Google Scholar appears to be strongly based on the ideas behind Citeseer, as described in the paper Digital Libraries and Autonomous Citation Indexing [7]. "Stand on the shoulders of giants" appears as a motto on the Google scholar main page.
During early 2005, Google Scholar was enhanced by the first attempt by a search engine to directly link its users to online resources at research libraries. Initially known as the Institutional Access Pilot, now Library Links, the service enables institutional users, primarily at major academic libraries, to identify their institutional affiliation and thereby receive customized search results that link to their institution's link resolver, thus ensuring they receive access to a document's full text.
www.google.com/psearch
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 queries made to Google Images and Google News. Recently, Google expanded Search History with a new feature, dubbed Trends, that allows users to view detailed statistics based on the data in their search history.
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.
*www.google.com/options/specialsearches.html
SMS
Main article: Google SMS
Google SMS (Short Message Service) allows users to send text message queries on mobile phone devices in order to easily get answers to questions. The answers appear in a text format and includes things such as stock quotes, movie listings, and driving directions.
*www.google.com/sms/
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. The term Ajax has come into widespread use to describe the technology used in Google Suggest. 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.
See also SurfWax News Accumulator and LookAhead(tm), pioneering query refinement services from SurfWax Inc. (see SearchEngineWatch) that use a proprietary Ajax framework and were launched January 2004. See also SurfWax RSS Search to scan RSS articles by Title using LookAhead technology.
See also WikiWax, another comparable service from SurfWax Inc. that searches Wikipedia articles. A similar service is provided by LuMriX.
See also Questsin, a blog explaining how Google Suggest Works as an algorithm including negative side effects of simple concatenating words together based on frequency of results.
*labs.google.com/suggest
Transit Trip Planner
Currently in Google Labs, the Google Transit Trip Planner was released on December 7, 2005 ([10]). Google Transit's goal is to provide local trip planning (eg, using the local buses and rail system) in a simplistic manner, all on one page. Utilizing the Google Maps interface, transit shows a picture of your route with detailed directions.
Google Transit currently works only in the Portland, Oregon area but will be expanded soon.
*www.google.com/transit
Translate
A translation service launched in May 2001 by Google, see Google Translate
University Search
Allows users to search within a large number of educational institution domains.
*www.google.com/options/universities.html
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. Google signed agreements with CBS and the NBA to offer some programs online.
Web Search
Main article: Google search
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. Google X was down for a short time but appears to been offially relaunched via their blogspot blog. Google X
Rumors say the project was discontinued because Google feared legal retribution from Apple.
Calculator
Explanation:
*www.google.com/help/calculator.html Google Calculator Help
*www.googleguide.com/calculator.html GoogleGuide calculator
Examples (the link texts are what is entered as if it were a search string):
12*13
0x23 in decimal
40 in hexadecimal
(1+i)*(2+i)
212 F in C
1.21 gigawatts / 88 mph
the speed of light in miles / s
the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight
the speed of light in knots
the speed of light in light years per year
days in a year
two plus two
au/c (Astronomical Unit / the speed of light)
m_earth (with underscore)
r_earth (with underscore)
G
1-0.9-0.1 = −2.77555756 × 10−17 (floating point math error)[11] (Fixed as of 00:34, 6 February 2006 (UTC))
kibibyte in bytes
kbit/s in bit/s = 1,024 bit/second (binary prefix error - kbit/s always means 1000 bit/s, unlike kilobyte, which is ambiguous)
the answer to life, the universe, and everything (see The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything)
[edit]
Currency Conversion
Explanation
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 Euros per liter in British pounds per Imperial pint
Definitions
Enables users to have a word or string (phrase) defined from definitions found in online references (including wiki sites). Explanation
Definition of cat.
Definition of Purple Rain.
Definition of George Washington.
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.
Official Google Hurricane Katrina search tools (Redirects to main search page as of 00:37, 6 February 2006 (UTC))
Music
"Google Music" is a service launched on December 15, 2005. The new service is not going to be a music library, such as Yahoo's. The service will search libraries of legal download services and will provide links to the partners, as well as lyrics and biographies of the artist. Initial merchant partners include Apple Computer's iTunes service, RealNetworks's Rhapsody, eMusic and Amazon.com, and WalMart.com, Google said. Google also said that this does not represent Google moving to be an online music retailer. The way the service is used is by simply typing in the name of a popular band and searching from the standard home page, the engine will return specialized results at the top of the results similar to "Google AdSense".
Movies
Allows users in the USA and Canada 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.
Weather
Allows users in the USA to get a four-day forecast for a particular U.S. locations using the main Google search interface.
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 have been upgraded to 250 MB for their free accounts, and 2 GB for their premium account.) 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. [12]
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 Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Turkey, and the United States with a cell phone capable of text messaging can now sign up without an invite from a current user at *www.google.com/accounts/SmsMailSignup1.
On February 7, 2006, Google announced they are currently adding Google Talk support into Gmail. This allows you to send instant messages to other talk users directly from your Gmail inbox. Many users already have access to this update and the integration is slowly being rolled over for those who don't.
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 alleging that their co-founder Orkut Büyükkökten illegally re-used Affinity Engines software code when he moved to Google. [13]
Language Tools
This tool allows users to translate text or web pages from one language to another. It also allows searching in web pages located in a specific country or written in a specific language.
Google Reader
Main article: 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. To add a "Add to Google Reader" Button with 1-click subscriptions to your webpage visit the link below.
Google Sitemaps
Main article: Google Sitemaps
In June 2005 Google released the Google Sitemaps tool into beta testing. Google Sitemaps allows Webmasters to generate a file that lists the URLs on the site in order for better indexing of the website. Google makes no promises about increasing PageRank with this tool, but it allows the Webmaster to get some feedback on the URLs that Google is searching.
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.
Writely
Main article: Writely
On March 9, 2006, Google acquired Upstartle, the maker of online word-processor Writely. It is still in beta and is not available to new users as of yet.
Downloads
Google Pack
Main article: Google Pack
Google Pack, announced at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show on 6 January 2006, bundles Google (Google Earth, Google Talk, Google Desktop, etc.) and non-Google software (such as Adobe Reader, Norton Antivirus and Trillian) into a single setup.
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.
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.
On November 3, 2005, Google "graduated" Desktop from beta. ([14])
Earth
Main article: Google Earth
Screenshot from 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.
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
Main article: Hello (application)
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.
On February 7, 2006, Google announced they are currently adding Talk support into Gmail. This allows you to send instant messages to other talk users directly from your gmail inbox. Many users already have access to this update and the integration is slowly being rolled over for those who don't.
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 allowed participation in Google Compute, a distributed computing project to help scientific research. This add-on is currently not available.
Other browsers, such as Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari, have built-in search tools that offer the same functionality. Google also has a 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 extension, which although not developed by Google directly offers very similar functionality to the official Google Toolbar.
In January 2006, Google released the beta version of its new toolbar, Google Toolbar Beta, for Windows XP/2000 and IE 6.0+ which allows users to get instant search suggestions; share web pages with friends; enjoy the Toolbar's pop-up blocker, web form filler, and spellchecker; add bookmarks; and add custom buttons. Google Custom Button Gallery
Then, in April 2006, Google released Google Toolbar 2 for Firefox for Windows XP/2000, Mac OS X, or Red Hat Linux and Firefox 1.0+. Additions included an "enhanced search box" and a new "safe browsing" anti-phishing feature. [15]
Toolbar trivia
The about dialog box for Google Toolbar has the Latin words "de parvis grandis acervus erit". Which can be translated as "From the small things there will arise plenty of great ones." Ovid, in Remedia Amoris used a similar phrase "de multis grandis acervus erit", translated as "Out of many things a great heap will be formed."
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 it 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.
It should be also mentioned that some have downloaded google's web accelerator and have noticed it only SLOWED DOWN their webpage load time, this was noted especially among comcast.net broadband internet users.
Google Web Accelerator is again available for download...
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
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 an advertiser's ads to 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.
Search Appliance
Main article: Google 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 15,000,000 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
Main article: Google 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 is restricted to less documents. From 50,000 up to a maximum of 300,000.
Retrieved from "*en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_services_and_tools"
