Google is taking a step towards taking all the messy, unstructured information on the Web and putting it into neat little, labeled boxes. Literally, that is what Google Squared does. First announced at last month’s Searchology event, Google Squared is now live. You can try it out.
Google Squared is an experimental search engine that is in its own “labs.” It gives you topical search results broken down by categories, something that Bing does in a different way with guided results in the left explore pane. Google Squared is more comparable to Wolfram Alpha in that it is A) really early stage, and B) goes and finds out every facet of a subject based on a single keyword search. But unlike Wolfram Alpha, it does not “compute” answers based on data that it has ingested into its own databases. Its database is the Web.
Does Google Squared crush Wolfram Alpha today? No. But as I originally suggested when it was announced, adding structure to the Web will eventually win out over a self-contained database. Even if it seems primitive today, its approach scales better than Wolfram’s.
Type in something like “planets” and the results come up as grid with the planet names, images, a short description, the equatorial surface, and the mean density. It only manages to identify seven planets, and those include Pluto and Ceres. (Where’s Uranus?) This is still very experimental. But you can add more rows and columns. When you click on the the “add” box under the planet names, for instance,, it will suggest the missing ones. Or you can add yor own category, and then it will fill in the other boxes in that row. You can also add a column. It suggests categories such as “Date of Discovery” and “Escape velocity” (which is important to know if you are planning to visit and want to ever return).
But how would you get to one of these planets? Well, you would need a spaceship, of course
Who can keep up?
Google should buy everything and run GM.
Its rather experimental still isn’t it…
You can click “Add next 10 items” and Uranus comes up along with other stuff. Beats me why they start with just 7 rows but perhaps that’s what the most common screen sizes can comfortably fit.
yeah but Mars is nowhere!!
I always said, Google can never take any competition in something it is good at, they will simply kill their competitors. Now that Google has released Squared, how long do we have to wait to see a Bingo (The one that comes after Bing
)
is this a star-up news?
I like Google Square.
This is really nothing like Wolfram Alpha, despite hearing that they would compete on some level.
All I wanted was some data on state-by-state unemployment. I tried “unemployment”, “unemployment united states”, “unemployment illinois michigan” and never got anything remotely close to what I was looking for (I usually got a list of states, or a list of countries, often not even for the specific states I listed).
Go to WA and try “unemployment illinois michigan”, on the other hand, and you get a historical graph of unemployment in each state.
If anything this makes me appreciate WA more. I have no desire to use this service again after spending five minutes with it.
try that on Google proper, you get more up to date results than on Wolfram.
Well just search for american states and then add a column and type in “unemployment” that does the trick but some data is weird or maybe tennessee really has 0,0% of unemployment
!! I take back what I said, this is brilliant. Often inaccurate, but way more powerful than I first thought.
Thanks
seems like a good idea, but i don’t know if i’ll ever get around to needing it.
Look at it this way: A very neat Product Comparision tool. Small businesses could actually use the Squared API (is it available?) to build their product comparision tools for their customers.
tried it not very good
And may we know why?
Because it fails so often. Try google, microsoft, oracle, larry page, sergey brin. Try Kurt vonnegut biography and you get only a list of books. Also try sheep.
i searched for something basic like “largest usa cities population” and got result that were full of you know what
I agree. I was looking forward to this but it didn’t work very well. I tried searches like Apple Computer, Macbook and it didn’t pull up relevant information. I wanted it to give me a comparison like the digital cameras.
I also searched for US Cities and these where the columns that it gave me – “Item Name” (city), “Image” (skyline view), ” Description (small blurb), but the last three where, ahhh…weird. “Height”, “Position”, “Telephone”. This is one Google product that will be in Beta for a LONG time to come (like the other ones aren’t).
Its better to use Wikipedia for such queries
now what we need really is APIs, and Open Data Formats for Google Squared and Wolfram, as well as a common query language. Then the web will be the database. Who’s going to be the first to offer RDF output and SPARQL queries capabilities on structured dataset ?
+1
Try square your favourite book author… neat
On a similar note I tried searching for Martin Scorsese and after it pulled up a square filled with details about films he directed I was able to add custom columns for Budget and Box Office results, >90% usable.
Though it took me 4 searches to find anything with any results at all.
Well, I liked it!
Did some tests and the results were ok. For sure this will be useful for many people that need easy and organized search results to compare data!
kind of a strange product. not sure what to make of this
Just tried to type “OS” on Google squared and… Windows’ not even on the 1st page. 1st is Linux
So now the re-launch after Google Public Data flopped, except it doesn’t even work correctly, and Erick’s still desperately clinging to his claim that it will crush Wolfram Alpha.
Apparently since then the Google Public Data team has spent their time adding wildly inaccurate crap to their results.
Yawn. Wake me up when it actually works and I’ll consider its potential to crush anything. F’ing idiot.
No one at google has ever claimed that this was a wolfram killer, that was something fabricated by the blogosphere…
What do you mean by inaccurate crap??
Go to Techmeme and read some of the other articles discussing Google Squared. Most of the ones I saw were actually objective, unlike the mindless cheerleading here at TechCrunch, and pointed out the negatives along with the positives.
it sucks
Just like your mother, trebek!
Thanks josh for the real-life example of Wolfram Alpha. Geez, kids won’t have to do homework anymore.
This is currently a toy, as the “labs” moniker implies.
Here is the problem, as I modestly see it: With a list of results, even sorted by whatever is the latest version of Page Rank, Google Search can get away with a ton of embedded garbage and smile as we have to sift through it ourselves. With a table, one becomes a little bit more demanding, expecting a modicum of precision and completeness. Then, it is almost a matter of trust.
Looking forward to see improvements later…
I saw this the other day and it looked aweful
well, just to clarify, what I saw was a page full of little squares and my eyes couldn’t focus on any one particular thing
There are so many better options to use.
I still prefer the interface and management aspects of http://www.Gridz.com versus Google Squared. Humans are better at categorizing than machines.
Epic fail.
Sorry but I still prefer the interface and management aspects of http://www.Grydz.com versus (sp) Google Squared. Humans are better at categorizing than machines.
“Where’s Uranus?”
Must. Be. Mature!
i love that you can add rows & columns. Reminds me of Terry Jones fluid db.
http://fluidinfo.com/
Is there an easy way to export the data? I wasn’t able to copy/paste into excel. Any plans of an export to csv feature?
It’s kind of interesting…
Right now, I really only see benefits for product comparison, or perhaps seeing different models/versions of a product
I guess what’s cool is how it pulls (sometimes) relevant columns pertaining to the search.
Good idea behind it
Actually, quite interesting. Yes, there are validity-of-data issues. But it’s nice that you can hover over a column, see what the source of the data is, select a value from another suggested source, or search for more values from other sources. The “add item” and “add column” functions are pretty cool.
Just for fun, I did a search for “south american country populations”. Several things came up wrong initially, but very quickly I was able to correct the spreadsheet to something usable that might’ve take a great deal longer if I had to scan a regular google search or some other source. (The nice thing about this is that it is customizeable on the fly and dynamic regarding the range of data items.)
Back to the issues per my example query (and their ultra quick resolutions): (1) I noticed that the “Item Names” were not just south american countries so I deleted those that weren’t. Interestingly, the spreadsheet “learns” from the deletions and changes the suggested items when you click in the “add item” box. Within 5 seconds I had all South American countries listed as items. (2) There were columns that I wasn’t concerned with so I just deleted them. (3) “Population” wasn’t one of the columns, so I just typed it in the “add column” box and clicked “add” – voila!
I then thought it would be nice to add “GDP” as another column. It was very quick to correct any obvious errors by replacing the source of the data.
As mentioned above, a nice feature will be an export feature. I also vote for a graphing function where you can set dimensions on specific columns.
@kalclate: excellent review. Too bad schnfeldberg can’t write like that.
FAIL!:
Venus: “Only at Venus, find the sexiest women’s swimwear and clothing. Shop online or request a catalog for sizzling hot clothing and”….. lol
And Ceres is NOT a planet lol.
Not compatible with Opera v9.64.
Oops! I lied.
It lacks even the basic UI requirements. I can’t sort or reorder the columns. Google should really learn on its experiences and the available UI.
The results rarely make any sense. This kind of thing still needs to have some human intelligence mixed in; compare to http://www.noodlesquares.com.
Search engines
http://www.goog...=search+engines
http://noodlesq...rchEngines.html
Cameras
http://www.goog...earch?q=cameras
http://noodlesq...om/Cameras.html
[disclaimer: associated with noodlesquares]
Its not good enough!
not bad.But these are just supplements to the main search.
just crap…
try searching msft what result u find !
try this
http://www98.wo...m/input/?i=msft
desperate attempt by google to launch a product comparable to WA
The result is not accurate just search for “google” and you will know what I mean
http://www.goog...search?q=google
Gmail: is a shareware!!!!
and “I’m Afraid I Can’t Let You Do That Dave” is an employee for Google Health!!!!!
Thanks
No square for ‘SaaS’ or ‘DeskAway’. Just created one for DeskAway, will see how this evoves!
Nothing came up for “Blog” or “Blogs”, so I created a ’square’ with suggestions like Tech Crunch, then it came up with relevant info (related blogs). But then when I searched it again, it came up with no results.. Does it not remember suggested squares then? I noticed it can remember your own squares if you’re logged in, but I thought everyone’s suggestions would contribute to their main system. Am I wrong?
Try doing a squared search for ’spaceship’, as Erick suggested. Look at the last entry on the list, the ‘Liberator’. That’s like no spaceship I’ve ever seen! Looks fun though.
Not sure when I’d ever use this.
Google Squared appears to be similar to my patent application:
Frankly, I am getting a Déjà vu effect while going through the “Google Squared” application because it appears to be very similar in function to my United States patent application which was filed on April 12, 2007 and as publicly disclosed by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on October 16, 2008, when the patent application was published.
My patent application is titled as “Method And System For Research Using Computer Based Simultaneous Comparison And Contrasting Of A Multiplicity Of Subjects Having Specific Attributes Within Specific Contexts” bearing Document Number “20080256023” and Inventor name “Nair Satheesh” which may be viewed at http://patft.uspto.gov/ upon Patent Applications: Quick Search.
Google Squared appears to be using at least some if not many of the same methods and systems as set forth by me more than two years ago in my patent application. In fact there are many more methods and systems disclosed in my patent application which I believe will help resolve certain inaccuracies found in current Google Squared application.
I have issued legal notices to Google through my Patent Attorney in the US but Google has not responded yet to any of my notices.