During today’s Google I/O keynote, the company unveiled a new set of widgets collectively called Web Elements that are sure to spread across the web like wildfire. The widgets allow users to quickly integrate some of Google’s most popular products, including Calendar, Search, and Maps, directly into their sites with a minimal amount of effort. Much of the same functionality has previously been available through Google APIs (in fact, some of these widgets were built on them), but most bloggers haven’t known how to use them before now. Google Web Elements makes the process much easier – just copy and paste an embed code, and you’re done.
Perhaps the most interesting widget is the ‘Conversation’ Element, which allows visitors to your site to post comments and videos, similar to the way they could using a FriendFeed embed. Site owners have the option of restricting these conversations to their sites, or to share them as global conversations through Google Friend Connect. You can check out a sample embed below.
Other widgets include ‘Presentations’, which allow you to embed presentations from Google Docs into your site, and ‘Spreadsheets’, which allow you to do the same with Google Docs spreadsheets. This is not going to be welcome news to sites like SlideShare, Scribd, and DocStoc, which let you do this with other documents.
The new Custom Search Element makes adding a Google search to your site very easy – just embed the provided snippet of code into your site, and Google will automatically index it.
The rest of the widgets are fairly self explanatory. Calendar lets you point out some important dates for you and your visitors, maps let you flag a location, and News shows the latest stories from Google News. Google also says that more widgets are on the way.
Also note the Mrs. Featherbottom reference in the shared Presentation. <3 Arrested Development
That´s interesting stuff this leads to Google Online allday long. A friend SEO told us, that´s bad for rankings? Is that correct?
Is it true? Can you enlighten us please?
Integrating Google Products and services with your website was never so easy… all thanks to WebElements from Google
This is cool !!! I really like the presentation, conversation …….. I am going to embed them in my site
Very very cool thing… I would use it!
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http://kitesurf...zz.blogspot.com
and here: http://euro-cha...ue.blogspot.com
I have a few uses in mind for this already. Although it could be done before, it was ugly and a major pain. So this is very good news.
I can see the News element being implemented by a large number of website owners…
The maps widget (er: “Element”) will be awesome. That whole deal was way to complicated for anyone but a programmer.
SWEEEET!!
Would these widgets decrease engagement/page views or will they monetize directly from them? Just curious.
- Not from India
And what if I don’t want Google UI all over my site? Can I redesign the widget to fit in with how I want it to look?
Let me answer that.
no.
Use the API then?
Widgets man, whod’a thunk?
Great! But pasting circa. 1995 iframes into your sweet XHTML is not good for anyones reputation
Should have the option to use a JavaScript embed for standards sake and also provide object tag embed code for those who are game enough.
I am told that this will give google access to all your data, as opposed to the API which would not. Is this true?
don’t worry there is more sites like slide shares just check this link http://www.simi.../slideshare.com
Does this mean that services like slideshare would bite the dust ?. Lending more credence to the wisdom that steer clear of anything that even remotely resemble anything in Google’s expanding product line .