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I’ve been spending the last few days fooling around with Google Squared, the search giant’s experimental attempt to generate structured results, and for the most part I’d consider myself cautiously optimistic. Now, Google has made it clear that Squared is still in pretty early stages. The logo has a nice big “Labs” title slapped on it, complete with green beaker. The blog post introducing the product to the public stated that Squared is experimental and that “this technology is by no means perfect” and is merely a first step. There’s no question that Google doesn’t think this product is ready for prime time. It’s just opening up the lab so we can see the nifty stuff that’s starting to form.

Which is why I’m already getting annoyed by the stories pointing out how funny it is that Google Squared has declared the current Russian president dead or that President Obama passed away in 1982. Oh, Prince William kicked the bucket, too. And Google Squared apparently hates conservatives. It’s probably only a matter of time before the mainstream press picks up on a potentially offensive result and multiple organizations scream with feigned outrage.

For those who haven’t been keeping up with it, Squared is a fairly major departure for Google that could eventually change the way we look up data on the web. If you run a query for “dogs“, rather than present a list of pages relevant to canines as the ‘normal’ Google would, Squared attempts to generate a spreadsheet of dog breeds, complete with their average height, weight, and country of origin. As with Wolfram Alpha, another structured data search engine, it’s very cool when it works — it just doesn’t work all that often.

Anyone who has used Squared for more than two minutes knows that it messes up quite a bit. I think you’d be hard pressed to search more than a few queries in a row that didn’t result in clearly incorrect facts or glaring omissions. Many of the service’s initial reviews pointed this out, and for good reason. We’ve all seen the goofs. But at this point honing in on a poor result just feels mean spirited and lazy.

The alternative is for Google to restrict access to Squared until it does work consistently, which could be years, if ever. What Google is doing here is pretty gutsy, and the fact that they’re letting us play with it when it’s still half-baked makes it even more so. So let’s take Squared for what it is, and (hopefully) help it grow into something powerful rather than harp on its self-admitted flaws.

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One of the next frontiers of search is taking all of the unstructured data spread helter-skelter across the Web and treat it like it is sitting in a nice, structured database. It is easier to get answers out of a database where everything is neatly labeled, stamped, and categorized. As the sheer volume of stuff on the Web keeps growing, keyword search keeps getting closer to its breaking point. Adding structure to the Web is one way to make sense of all that data, and Google is starting the tackle the problem with a Google Labs project called Google Squared, which Marissa Mayer mentioned earlier today at the company’s Searchology briefing.

Google Squared extracts data from Web pages and presents them in search results as squares in an online spreadsheet. Michael was at the event and got a personal demo (see video below). From Michael’s Searchology notes:

Google Squared is launching later this month in labs. Google Squared returns search results in a spreadsheet format. It structures the unstructured data on web pages. So a search for Small Dogs returns results with names, description, size, weight, origin, etc., in columns and rows.

Google is looking for data structures on the web that imply facts, and then grabbing it for Squared results. “It takes an incredible amount of compute power to create one of those squares,” she says.

This type of technology has obvious applications for many types of targeted searches, including product search, health search, scientific searches, you name it. There are dozens of semantic search startups trying to impose structure on the Web to perform similar tricks. Another high-profile search startup which is launching on Monday, Wolfram Alpha, takes a slightly different approach in that it simply ingests massive amounts of information into its own databases where it can query it to its heart’s delight. Already there is a bit of a rivalry between Google and Wolfram because getting back structured results is a major new direction for search.

Wolfram does a pretty good job parsing the information in its own databases, but those databases will never match what is available on the Web. Wolfram’s databases currently store only 10 terabytes of information, a tiny fraction of what is on the Web. (I will be posting my impressions of Wolfram’s search engine soon). Google Squared is an early attempt to take the messy data which exists on the Web and place it into simple tables. It is still very experimental and isn’t always on target, but you can see where this is going. Turning the Web into a giant database will crush any attempt to segregate the “best” information into a separate database so that it can be processed and searched more deeply.

In the video demo below, a search for “camera” sorts the results in different columns by images, description, and manufacturer, resolution, etc.. You can refine results by clicking on a particular column such as manufacturer. A search for “rollercoasters” sorts results by name, image, description, height, length, and number of inversions. But sometimes it gets confused. A search for “spaceships” turns up a Corvette and a missile carrier. It is going to be a while before this makes it out of Google Labs

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Loopt was the first location-based iPhone app to get a lot of buzz. It’s a social network that lets you keep track of where your friends are with the help of the iPhone’s GPS. Since it launched in the App Store on day 1 in July of last year, several other competitors have come along including Google with its Latitude service (though it’s not yet available on the iPhone). Now Loopt appears ready to strike back with Loopt 2.0.

The screenshot we received appears to show what Loopt is going for with this new version. The second button in the toolbar is now “Places,” something which didn’t exist before. A source close to the company says this is a big part of the new version. We hear this could help the company offer more monetizable features, such as coupons.

Another thing we’re hearing is that the focus with Loopt 2.0 will be on something called the “life graph.” Basically this takes your social graph, and lays it on top of the places you go to give you suggestions on what to do. If this sounds familiar, it’s what Foursquare, the new service from the creators of Dodgeball (acquired by Google in 2005) has been working on. Another competitor, Whrrl, launched in the App Store last year with more of a focus on places, but recently revamped its offering to focus around social stories.

The new version of Loopt is apparently still being worked on, but should be out this summer, we hear.

One thing to note, is that it appears that one of the largest hurdle will remain for Loopt on the iPhone, as apps still cannot run in the background. That’s vital for something like a location-based network that thrives off of knowing where you are. But perhaps the company has something interesting planned for the upcoming Push Notification feature of the iPhone 3.0 software due this summer.

Disclosure: Loopt offers a TechCrunch branded version of the service here.

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