Hidden strengths

You might be surprised to find what Google can tell you if prompted in certain ways. Active Googlers stumble across some of these features in the course of daily rummaging, because Google spits out information in unrequested configurations when it thinks you need it. (Yes, Google does seem like a thinking animal sometimes.) Other chapters describe exactly how to coax explicit types of search results from the site. Here, my aim is to briefly summarize power features you might not be aware of:

Document repository: Most people, most of the time, search for Web pages. But many other types of viewable (or listenable) pieces of content are available on the Internet. For example, almost every modern computer comes with the capability to view PDF files, which are documents such as articles, white papers, research texts, and financial statements that retain their original formatting instead of being altered to fit a Web page. Google includes documents other than Web pages in its general search results and also lets you narrow any search to a specific file type.
Government and university tracker: Not to get all paranoid on you, but if you’re into watching your back, the first of these features could prove helpful. More benignly, Google reserves distinct portions of its search engine for government domains and another for university domains.
Scholarly resource: If you ever imagined that Google was a sort of library card catalogue to the Web, Google Scholar brings that idea closer to home. This dedicated index digs up academic papers and scholarly books — though not to read, in all cases. The Google Scholar engine is great for finding both titles and citations to those titles in other papers and books.
Keyword suggestion tool: One of the great (if unrecognized) difficulties of high-quality Internet searching is finding the useful keyword or keyphrase. Google Suggest offers productive keyphrase suggestions as you type in the keyword box. These and other new aspects of the Google experience came from a dedicated technology incubation project called Google Labs. Remember when entire businesses were built solely on cultivating online ideas? Most of them crashed and burned, adding to the rubble of the exploded Internet bubble. Google is modestly, but importantly, continuing the incubating tradition by evolving ways of enhancing its information engine.

Answers of all sorts

One problem with the Web as an information source is the question of authenticity. Anybody can put up a Web site and publish information that might or might not be factual. True expertise is difficult to verify on the Web. Two solutions exist to the verification problem: standard reference sources and on-demand professional research services. Neither is likely to be found on a typical Web site, professional and authoritative though that site might be. The desire for reference-style answers has given birth to dedicated answer engines such as Answers.com (formerly Gurunet). Google, recognizing that its users sometimes need a quick answer rather than a list of Web sites that might (or might not) contain that answer, has built answer-engine capability into its Web engine. In some cases Google delivers the answer directly; in other cases it links you to an outside site that displays your answer. Some of the answers supplied by Google include eminently practical information such as stock quotes, the weather, movie show times, calculator functions, word definitions, phone book information, delivery service tracking, and airport status.
The second solution to the verification problem, on-demand professional research, is provided at Google Answers. Google Answers is . . . well, the answer. Staffed by a large crew of freelance researchers in many subjects, Google Answers lets you ask questions and receive customized answers — for a price. How much? That’s up to you; an auction system is used whereby you request an answer for a specified price, and individual researchers either take on your question or not. See Chapter 10. One nice touch: Google maintains a directory of previously asked and answered questions, sorted by topic. Browsing through the archives is a nice way to audition the quality of the service (it’s good), and you might find that your query has already been solved.

Portable information butler

Google provides excellent results for the lazy, one-stop Internet searcher. And don’t we all deserve a search engine that works hard on our behalf? Well, Google goes beyond the call of duty by following you around even after you’ve left the site. Only if you want it to, of course. You can rip the Google engine right out of its site (so to speak) and take it with you while traipsing around the Web in three main ways:
Google Toolbar: If you’re aware of Google Toolbar, you’re probably using it. You should be, anyway. If this is the first you’ve heard of it, today is the first day of the rest of your online citizenship. Internet life will never be the same. Google Toolbar bolts right into your browser, up near the top where your other toolbars reside. It enables you to launch a Google search without surfing to the Google site. I bet that in some dictionaries a picture of the Google Toolbar is next to the definition of cool.
Google Deskbar: Deskbar takes independence even further by separating Google from the Web browser entirely. Google Deskbar sits right on your computer desktop, and displays search results in its own window. Google searching is made easy and portable by Mozilla browsers — Firefox and Netscape, which incorporate search bars within the browser that are
naturally configured (and can be customized) to take your search queries directly to Google. Google’s portable features insinuate the service into your online life more deeply than merely bookmarking the site. Google will take over your mind. But that’s a good thing.

And now for something completely different

The Google empire is young and relatively small compared to the Yahoo! powerhouse. In building itself out, Google has made a few key acquisitions:
Blogger.com: One of the most used platforms for Weblogging (easy online journaling), Blogger.com provides easy tools for creating online journals and amateur news sites.
Picasa: Picasa is an image-sorting and image-editing program that was popular when Google got its hands on it, and then became much more popular when Google eliminated the price and gave the program away.
Keyhole: A satellite-imaging company, Keyhole offers a subscription service through which users can view the earth and zoom down to see details with amazing precision. All three of these companies operate somewhat independently of Google, while definitely being under Google’s direction. For the Google user searching with Google, Blogger and Picasa don’t play any part in the Google experience. Keyhole is somewhat integrated with Google Local.