Every so often Google changes the Internet in a way that we cant even recognize it anymore. In the past few years they have created a cascade of services on the Internet. The idea of Gmail, a free email service that gives 1GB of storage, at a time when all others managed a maximum under 100MB seemed so far fetched that many regarded it to be an April fools day prank. The changes it has made have now seeped to other email providers as well, with most offering at-least 1GB of storage. However email is not the only thing it has redefined.
Recently Google has once again introduced features that have the potential to change the shape of the Internet in the days to come. These features may seem to many to be equally ridiculous and far fetched dreams, but you are sure to wake up when you actually see them in action!
Google Similar Images Search
Finding images always relies on them being correctly tagged / labeled or named. However many times images are not only incorrectly tagged and named, but also reside in the most unlikely of places surrounded by content it has nothing to do with.
Google Similar Images allows you to search for images using images! When you search for an image using Google similar images search, you look for images using keywords as usual, however once you find an image which matches what you were looking for, you merely need to click on the ‘Similar Images’ link below the image. It will then give you a list of images which match the one you searched for originally.
A search for ‘Hummer’ for example, will give you a list of images of the car. However clicking on ‘Similar Images’ below an image of a ‘Hummer limousine’ will give you results which predominantly feature ‘Hummer Limousines’.
Google News Time-lines
Ever wanted to see how news events progress? Although Google introduced a time-line feature for search results quite some time ago, it was merely a graph showing densities of that keyword occurring over time. Their new News Time-lines tool on the other hand, beats the old one hands down! It shows a graphical scrollable time-line showing actual article search results over time, in daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or even decade views.
It is a great tool to explore the history of anything by seeing how its articles change over time. For example a quick search for ‘Disney Pixar’ in a yearly view, will take you through the history of their partnerships, rumors, movies, collaborations and the eventual purchase of Pixar by Disney.
Google Audio Indexing
This little marvel has been around for quite some time, however seems to have been mostly neglected. However we think it deserves some more attention.
Google Audio Indexing, actually examines the content of YouTube videos, and indexes the words spoken in the audio! This means that you can search for how many people are talking about a particular subject in videos. Currently the search engine has only indexed a select list of Politicians Speeches. However the system works wonderfully. It even lists and highlights occurrences in each video, and provides links to jump to the point of occurrence.
Want to know which politician talked about ‘environmentalism’ in which speech. With Audio Indexing it is as simple as searching for the text that they are speaking, and Google does the rest.
Over time once technology seeps in, it becomes easier to integrate everything with each other. These three technologies mentioned above are very powerful research tools. To find out as much as you can about the influence of topics related to ‘Global Warming’ on the recent elections, you can use the time-line to see how articles about it change over time, watch videos of how where and when which politicians talked about it, and search for their images using Similar image search!
Worried that Google might just be taking over the world? So are we, ever since we got this image of a sneak preview of Google 75years from now:
