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Posts Tagged ‘google-search’

If I were a spit takin’ man, I’d do a spit take right now. Motorola, stalwart of freedom, will work with Chinese carriers to add Bing to Chinese Android-based phones, ousting Google Search and Maps from the scene. Now this isn’t meanness on Motorola’s part although Reuters notes that this move could have something to do with that whole Great Chinese Google Hacking Incident a few weeks ago.

Last week, we covered Googlle opening a school in India. Googlle, not to be confused with Google. Obviously, this was a site and service set up to trick people, as they were even ripping-off Google’s logo. Well guess what? After the publicity, they decided to switch up some things.

Most notably, you’ll see that the Googlle Institute has a brand new, beautiful logo, as Fake Steve noticed today. Gone is the Google font and colors. It has been replaced by “Googlle” written in red. I’m not sure what the font is, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Googlle wasn’t supposed to be using it.

You’ll also notice a new “declaration” at the bottom of the site:

We are no way related to Google Search Engine, Neither We want to copy the name or take advantage of that name & Pronounciation of same is different as “Google”.

Poor English aside, I’m going to assume Google India may not have been too happy about the site, and this is Googlle trying to cover itself.

They also apparently took the time to fix all the broken links (simply by removing many of them). They’ve also switched up the curriculum, now offering a 1-year program for a “googlle intern.” Hurry, they’re accepting applications now!

[thanks Brinke]

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Search is getting more visual. Today, Google is adding universal search elements to Google Suggest, the drop-down list of suggested keywords that appear under the search box as you type. Now you may find suggestion box filled with results from universal search, which may include weather, flight status, definitions, calculations, currency conversions, and more. Universal results tend to have a visual component, such as the sun-and-cloud icons that appear for weather-related searches or the clock for time-related searches.

Google says it is all about making search even faster.  It is also releasing a new extension for Chrome called Quick Scroll which helps you find the part of a web page that triggered a search result.  So when you do a search and then click through to a results page, a black box pops up in the lower right-hand corner of the screen which will take you exactly to the place on the page which most closely matches your search query.  Once again, this is designed to get you to the information you are looking for faster rather than just using the “find” function in your browser.

Google engineers Ruth Dhanaraj & Matias Pelenur explain in a post:

Like Google Search, Quick Scroll analyzes things like proximity, prominence and position of the words to identify the most relevant content. You can think of it like a personal assistant who reads webpages before you do and highlights the parts you might want to read. If several sections of the page have useful content, Quick Scroll will show you multiple text excerpts from different portions of the page and you can click on any of them to scroll to that specific section.

Search Everywhere, so to speak.

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There are few things more terrifying to me than the idea of going anywhere near a shopping establishment on Black Friday. But if I lived in New York City, I think I would this year because Google, Verizon, Reuters, and R/GA are teaming up to take over the largest displays on Times Square to allow for a giant Google Search by voice experiment/Droid advertisement.

What does this mean? On Black Friday, anyone who calls 888-376-4336 and does a Google Search by voice, will see their results displayed on either the Reuters sign or the NASDAQ sign in Times Square. So, if you say something like “new Jonas Brothers CD,” the display will come up with a giant Google Map complete with signs showing you where you can find that. Also included is the embarrassment that everyone in Times Square has just seen what ridiculous thing you are searching for.

This is all a big promotion for Droid, the new Android phone built by Verizon and being heavily pushed by Google. And the promotion has actually been going on for the past couple of weeks in New York, but it previously has only run during 90 minutes timeslots in the afternoon or night. On Black Friday, it will be running for 20 hours straight. I would love to know how much that advertisement cost.

Here’s a site with the countdown to the event complete with the message: “Droid will do Times Square for 20 hours…” Minds out of the gutter, folks.

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Last month we saw the launch of TechCrunch50 winner RedBeacon, the startup that lets you book local service providers directly from the web. Today it’s getting some strong competition from a new startup called Thumbtack, a local service booking engine that’s looking to offer both a comprehensive directory of providers and a greater degree of trust than you can find elsewhere.

Featurewise, Thumbtack is a mix between RedBeacon, Yelp, and OpenTable. Like RedBeacon, it lets you sign onto the site and issue a request for a service, which service providers can then bid on. CEO Marco Zappacosta says this portion of the service is nearly identical to RedBeacon, complete with a bidding engine for providers to set pricing. But Thumbtack also offers provider profiles, where these providers can list some of their specialties and price points. There’s also a section where you can book a service directly from a profile page as you would on OpenTable, complete with an availability calendar.

One of the biggest issues with local services like Thumbtack is the chicken-and-the-egg problem. These sites generally launch with a relatively small number of services, which means that users can have a hard time finding what they need (and without users, providers have little incentive to join the site). Thumbtack has tried to address this by spending the last year recruiting providers – at launch, the startup says it already has 10,000 of them, ranging from tutors and handymen to rap teachers and henna artists. Thumbtack is also using some clever incentives to get companies to sign up, like offering discounted business cards and other marketing materials. Zappacosta explains that Thumbtack can order these goods in bulk because they work with so many companies, and then pass the savings on to businesses that sign up.

The other big issue with this kind of site is the creepiness factor – many of these services involve inviting these people into your home (say, to fix a sink) or to a private event (wedding caterers). Along with user reviews, which are standard for this space, Thumbtack is taking a few extra steps. If a service provider is licensed they can post that in their profile, which Thumbtack will verify for free. Thumbtack is also giving providers a handful of premium verification options, such as electing to undergo a background check by a national agency (prices vary from $8 to $49 depending on the level of verification). Providers who successfully pass these checks are rewarded with badges on their profile pages, giving users more confidence in their service. Every provider is also run through the DOJ sex offender registry.

Thumbtack plans to make money by building a payment system off of PayPayl’s adaptive payments API. They’ll take a cut out of each transaction that occurs on the site, and for services that require in-person estimates (like plumbing) they’ll take a lead-gen payment. They’ll also be taking a cut every time a provider elects to get verified through one of the third party background check services. Thumbtack is offering its service nationwide beginning today, but as with RedBeacon their primary focus is the Bay Area, with plans to expand down the road.

Thumbtack is doing a lot of things right with its site – I particularly like the idea of having providers verified through background checks, which helps differentiate it from sites like Angie’s List, Craigslist, and RedBeacon (which lets providers display their licenses but doesn’t do background checks). That said, Thumbtack faces the same challenges that RedBeacon will have. For one, it’s going to have to train users to turn to their computers rather than their yellow pages for these local services. And while 10,000 businesses is a good start, it’s going to take a long time for the service to build up a robust community of users and reviews. The background checks are a nice touch, but they don’t do much for helping users discern which providers offer a high quality service.

For another service that’s taking a different approach to matching users with trustworthy service providers, check out Workstir, which provides suggestions based on your social graph.

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The brains behind Yahoo Boss, a young engineer named Vik Singh, is leaving Yahoo to become an entrepreneur-in-residence at Sutter Hill Ventures. Earlier this year, Singh was named to Technology Review’s 35 Under 35 list at the age of 24. Singh is exactly the kind of talent Yahoo should be trying to hold onto, but that is hard to do now that it is ceding search to Microsoft.

Singh is more diplomatic. Contacted for comment he confirms, “I’ll be starting next week actually. I’m really pumped but I’m going to definitely miss Yahoo! It’s been such a great company to work at but I just got this really bad case of the entrepreneurial bug.”

Yahoo Boss, which was largely Singh’s idea, is one of Yahoo’s most successful projects among developers. It “>opens up the power of Yahoo’s search index and algorithms to other sites. Yahoo Boss is a set of APIs and Web services which let people build their own customized search engines. (We use it for our search engine here at TechCrunch). Since it launched a year and a half ago, upwards of one billion search queries a month are powered through the service.

Prior to Yahoo, Singh cut his teeth at Microsoft Research in the lab of computer scientist Jim Gray, who was tragically lost at sea two years ago.

Singh already has some ideas about what he wants to work on at Sutter Hill, but he is keeping them close to his vest at this point. He does offer this: “There’s a line my mentor Jim Gray used to say to me all the time: ‘We gotta party on the data!’ I know it’s vague, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” Party on, dude.

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As part of its push to go more social, Google has been attempting to unify its various account profiles into one Google Profile. And now it’s more useful. Google’s Brad Fitzpatrick has just tweeted out that Google Profiles can now be used as OpenIDs.

What this means is that you can sign into any site that accepts OpenID simply by using your Google Profile domain. Luckily, a few months ago Google started allowing these profiles to have vanity URLs, like /mgsiegler, instead of the previous /32090329039402903. Chris Messina, a huge proponent of the open web movement, has just sent out a picture of what signing in with OpenID via your Google Profile looks like (below).

Despite its good intentions, OpenID has yet to take off in mainstream usage. The problem, it seems, is largely about presentation. Most people have no idea which of their various accounts can be used as OpenIDs, or really even what OpenID is. Google backing it a bit more with these profiles obviously helps, but will it take OpenID mainstream? Probably not.

More interesting may be the second part of Fitzpatrick’s tweet. “Also, gmail webfinger declares that now too.” It’s not entirely clear what he means by that, but it would seem to suggest that we’re getting closer to being able to use our Gmail addresses as a web ID. WebFinger is a protocol being worked on by Fitzpatrick to allow you to attach information to your email address (in this case, you Gmail address), so it can be used as a solid means of identification.

Update: Kevin Marks (former Googler, now with BT) has pointed me to webfinger.org an example site built by Blaine Cook (formerly of Twitter). The site allows you to easily set up your Gmail account with Webfinger right now. As you can see in the example below from Cook’s account, many of the social networks Cook is a part of are pinned to his email address.

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While they’ve been selectively displaying them for a little while now, Google today took the time to talk about and show off its new search ads. The general gist? Bigger, bigger, click me, bigger. Or, in Google’s own words, “Text is often useful, but sometimes videos and pictures are a more effective way to receive information.”

That can be true, I suppose, but each of these additions also make the ads units significantly bigger, and as such, much more in-your-face. More often than not, that doesn’t equal a better experience for the user. Of course, Google’s unstated hope is that you’ll be more likely to click on these bigger ads, especially now that many contain visuals.

Naturally, Google says these types of ads are an extension of what they are trying to do with Google itself, which is offer up more rich search results. Over the past several weeks, visitors in the U.S. may have noticed search ads featuring videos, additional links below the main link, Google Map information, and comparison ads.

A new one being added today shows thumbnails of various items, along with their prices, for comparison shopping. I believe Google has finally cracked the code for getting my mother to click on their ads non-stop. Well played, Google.

And what fortuitous timing, right before Black Friday.

For many of the ads with larger visuals (such as the movies and the maps), you can collapse them. Still, I’m worried that these ads will eventually keep growing and shove actual search results farther and farther down the page.

[photo: flickr/garethjmsaunders]

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I’m a big fan of keeping things simple, but that doesn’t mean things have to be bland. Google search results are pretty bland. Sure, sometimes you get returned things like YouTube thumbnails or pictures, but many results are still just a monotonous stream of blue links. Google tried to break this stream up a bit with its Search Options, an expandable feature, that gives you a left-side toolbar. But even that is just a bland series of links. Google is finally thinking about changing that.

Today, Google has begun testing a new look for Search Options. This offers more visual approach to this sidebar, including colors and graphics (oh my). As you can see in the screenshot, “Everything” (regular Google results), “News,” and “Blogs” are a few of the newly visual tabs. There is also a “More” area that shows other things like “Maps.”

Yes, these look quite a bit more like Yahoo search results.

But the most significant thing about this new look may be that it’s showing up as the default view for those seeing this test. Yes, it’s no longer as just an expandable option. Could this be the future of Google Search?

[thanks Kevin]

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Angstro, a 2008 TechCrunch50 startup, launched with a product that socialized the content on the web by tapping into your social graph. At the Real-Time CrunchUp today the startup is launching Knx.to, a real-time search engine capability and API that looks up most recent social information about any of your friends, from their LinkedIn profile to their Flickr account to their Facebook profile.

In order to understand Knx.to’s virtue, it’s best to see the technology implemented in an application. Ribbit Mobile, a Google Voice competitor and cloud-based VoIP telephony service, recently launched with the capability of integrating any calls to a contact with your social networks, which was powered by Knx.to.

To enable the application, you sign into your Twitter, Gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr accounts via oAuth, Facebook Connect and more. When a friend calls you (or you call a friend), the technology will automatically scan all of your social networks, identify if the contact is a friend, and will pull all the most recent photos, Tweets, status updates, and more into its search pane. The idea is to give a social context to all of your contacts, which is definitely useful information for both professional and personal contacts.

Knx.to’s is officially launching its API to allow a variety of applications to tap into this new way for adding additional social information to contacts. It’s a innovative idea and something that many applications, whether it be email or VoiP/phone based technologies.

The startup also has a standalone consumer facing search engine that lets users easily tap into the most recent information about a friend or contact from one platform. After logging into your accounts via oAuth, Facebook Connect and more, you simply type in a friend’s name and the real-time results of your friends’ latest acitivity on Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, and Yahoo Mail will show up. Additional social media sites will be added in the future.

One issues with tapping into social networks for this information is security. But Knx.to’s founder, Rohit Khare, says that all of the results and information are stored in your browser, and don’t break any social network’s terms of agreements. Similar in some ways to email plug-in Xobni, Knx.to adds another layer to your contact list which in the age of social media, is very useful.

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