5 Fabulous New Features Google Unveiled Today
Google is holding a major demo event at the Computer History Museum today and unveiled a number of incredible new features. It was the kind of event that restores a person's faith in Google as a major innovator.
From voice search and translation, to location and visual search, here are the five most impressive technologies unveiled so far.
The demos are all being done by Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering for Google.
Near Instant Voice Translation
A new prototyped product allows not just search by voice, but near instant translation between English and Spanish in the cloud, via your mobile phone. Gundotrpha spoke a paragraph's worth of words into his phone and within seconds the phone recited a translated version back in Spanish. It was amazing. Google hopes to have support for all the world's major languages completed sometime in 2010.
Customized Suggest Based on Location
Google Suggest is a very smart, if under-appreciated, feature. The feature will soon make use of location information when searches are performed on mobile devices. Gundrotrpha demonstrated on one phone that believed it was in Boston and one that believed it was in San Francisco. Upon typing the letters "RE" the Boston phone suggested searches for Red Sox, the local baseball team. The San Francisco phone suggested a search for REI, the outdoor gear outfitter.
Google Product Search Combined With Inventory Feeds from Local Retailers
Local mobile product search will soon tell you where the nearest store with a product is and whether that product is in stock.
Near Me Now
Google.com on mobile, starting today on Android phones, will offer top-level search categories like restaurants or stores on the front page. Click that button and you'll see the closest-by search results ranked by user rating.
Google Goggles
Visual search. Take a photo, click a button and Google will analyze imagery and text in the photo for your search query. Pretty exciting. 1 billion images are included in the index today but Google says it has made the decision not to include facial recognition until privacy concerns are figured out.
Stay tuned for the next update... on Google's new real-time search.
Share
Facebook
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Bing doesn't stand a chance.
This is so exciting, it's hard to imagine what's going to happen in the next five years. The pace of this innovation is only going to get faster and faster, and high school students better take note and keep up.
John Andrew Williams
www.toptenskills.com
google and mobile is really doing some amazing things. These announcements, are really going to make a difference in mobile search.. the only issue is will end users care ( most non tech people).
Google Goggles is so amazing. It reminds me of the book in Diamond Age. Imaging being able to take a photo of the night sky and getting a annotated night sky page with all the details back :)
I just wish they'd use some of that Google Goggles technology to improve Google's online image search. You really get a lot of unrelated junk when you search for something that seems relatively straightforward.
What exactly is innovative about any of this?
Google is just doing what it always does. Destroying the value in an existing vertical space already inhabited by other people.
It's what Microsoft used to do and people screamed EVIL OMG EVIL and when Google does it you people say YAY, thank you Google for devaluing other people's work in order to deliver more targetted spam advertising. Thank you Google, oh Thank you.
Wake up.
Google is pushing new apps by the day. Somehow, they are all seem to be eternally beta versions. It's as if Google never delivers release versions.
No: Do not aggravate the Google!
All ideas are fabulous, But as i newbie i liked first two.
Nice tip... :)
Now in real time content creators can wee google generate revneue from their work....and not give them anything in return...
The Google Goggles are... awesome!
For me the near instant translation is most interesting. Just how accurate is that? I'd love to see the stats
Cool features. Google is the best we can get information on anything and everything. Thumps up! I like Google Goggles. It's really amazing.
I am so excited to see the new five features related to google.I like post which gives the new inspiration to the google user to use the product with more ease way.Google is the best we can get information on anything and everything. Google is just doing what it always does. Destroying the value in an existing vertical space already inhabited by other people.
@1 bing.com will find a way to adapt. Just because they are slowly innovating, they are still innovating. I'm a big Google fan like most, but I wouldn't completely discount MS and bing.com!
The pace of this innovation is only going to get faster and faster, and high school students better take note and keep up.